Creation vs Evolution: Part 2 - Macroevolution and Microevolution

When I was teaching a class from a curriculum I am working on entitled “Apologetic Creationism” in a Christian high school, I astounded my students by making a bold claim. I started off one class by saying “Evolution is a proven fact”. This brought a lot of surprised looks from the students, who had been brought up in an environment that shunned any type of evolutionary thinking.

However, I stick to my claim. Evolution is a proven fact. What is not proven yet is the Theory of Evolution as pertaining to the origin of life. To understand what I am saying, we must understand the difference between micro evolution and macro evolution.

Macroevolutionary studies focus on change that occurs at or above the level of species¹. In basic English, this is the idea that entire gene pools can change, allowing one species to eventually or abruptly become another species. This is the premise on which the entire Theory of Evolution is based, that one species became another, which became another, and so on. If this is true, then it is very possible that a single celled organism could eventually become a complex life form. I will deal with problem areas with this thinking in other posts. I am simply posting it here to contrast the differences in microevolution and macroevolution.

Microevolution is the changes in allele frequencies that occur over time within a population.² This is what has been proven time and time again, only to be misused by those on the side of evolution, and many times discredited by those on the side of intelligent design.

Even those that are the most staunch defenders of intelligent design must accept microevolution as simple fact. For example, intelligent design proponents believe that we were all descended from one couple. For those that believe in the great deluge (flood), that couple was Noah and his wife. For those that do not believe in the great deluge, they point to Adam and Eve. Whichever they believe is not relevant to this discussion, only the fact that they point to a single couple as the origin on human life.

If we all descended from a single couple, then why don’t we all look the same / similar? Where did the different races come from? Why are some of us white, some black, some tan? Why do we have differing hair textures? Eye shapes? It’s because we all adapted to our surroundings as needed. We “evolved” differently.

Take a simple hypothetical case study:

A man and a woman move to an uninhabited island. They have 6 kids, 3 boys and 3 girls. With no one else to marry, these children marry each other. Their children would adopt the dominate traits of their parents. In one generation, these traits wouldn’t be too diverse. But after time, other dormant traits would begin to appear. Maybe one group were more muscular. Maybe one group had red hair predominantly. Maybe a third group were shorter.

Well, as is the case in any society, people with the same physical traits tend to flock together. Since the shorter ones would tend to hang out with the shorter ones, they would naturally find a mate amongst the other shorter people. Since both parents carried this trait most, if not all, their children would also have this trait. The same would go for the muscular people, and the people with red hair.

Eventually you would have three distinct groups of people: those with red hair, those that are short, and those that are muscular. The dominant traits defined who they were.

Natural selection can also play a role, as much as intelligent design proponents hate the phrase. If there were two families of giraffes, one with shorter necks than the other family, then there would be a problem. The giraffes with the longer necks could reach both the leaves low on a tree and up high, while those with shorter necks could only reach the lower leaves.

Since two groups would be eating the lower leaves, and only one group the higher, eventually the lower leaves would be eaten at 3 times the rate of the higher leaves, assuming equal amount of both families, and equal ratio of lower to higher leaf eating among the long necked giraffes. When the lower leaves were all eaten, then 2/3 of the higher leaves would still be left for only half the population, sustaining them easily. But since the lower leaves are gone, the short necked giraffes would die, and the short necked trait would die with them.

This is microevolution at work through natural selection. Those that lack the traits to help them survive eventually die out, leaving those with the trait needed to survive alive. This has been seen with moths in a smoggy city, where the smoke colored moths survived while all the black moths were eaten by birds. And so the black color trait died out.

Now, in these two scenarios, it must be pointed out that the traits were already existent. They were dormant in the first scenario, and already dominant in the second scenario.

I hope this explains microevolution and macroevolution. Next post will be the first problem for evolutionists: the bombardier beatle.

   - Sapper Woody

References:

¹ Dobzhansky, Theodosius Grigorievich (1937). Genetics and the origin of species. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. p. 12. LCCN 37033383.

² http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0_0/evoscales_02 

Skyrim: My Death Knight

In an earlier post, I mentioned my Death Knight build on Skyrim. I figured I would take a few posts and let you see how I was maximizing my builds for different classes. So, I will tell you what I built, and why.

Death Knight

This class takes a level 60 character to build.

Smithing:
   I took all the heavy armor smithing perks, all the way up to dragon armor. For this character, you really only need up to Ebony, but you're going to have a lot of extra dragon bones/scales that you can make armor with and sell, so I took them.

Heavy Armor:
   I took all five Juggernaut perks, to get my armor up.
   Well Fitted to get my armor even higher.
   Tower of Strength just to get to the next tier of perks.
   Matching set for another armor bonus.
   Reflect blows, because 10% less damage done to you and inflicted on the enemy is a nice little trade.

Block:
   I took just one Shield Wall, just to get to the next tiers.
   Deflect Arrows, to stop arrows, obviously.
   Elemental Protection, as 50% elemental resist plus your gear resistances can make you invincible while blocking some dragons.

One Handed:
   All five Armsman and all three Bladesman, to maximize your damage potential.

Speech:
   All five haggling, simply because you have the points, and better prices gets you more money to buy the things you need.

Restoration:
   The goal here is simply to unlock Avoid Death, so to get it, I needed to take Novice Restoration and Recovery. With points left over, I am going to get the second Recovery. Extra Magicka regen is always nice for tight situations.

Conjuration:
   Work your way up to Twin souls through the Necromancy tree. You can then have two zombies and they will be more powerful. (Tip: Get the "Dead Thrall" spell at the college of magic for permanent zombies.You have to have at least 90 in Conjuration to do the questline.)

Alteration:
   Apprentice, Adept, and Expert, to unlock what we really want.
   All three Magic Resistance, for obvious reasons.
   Atronach, to absorb Magicka, and assist with casting costs.

With the extra points, I am going to get some destruction magic (Frost, like the Lich King), and some more speech and then some Alchemy, as strong potions are always nice.

Have fun!

   - Sapper Woody

An annoying Skyrim Glitch, and the Fix

So, I was doing good, making my Death Knight class. He is amazing, but that's another story for another time.

Basically, I joined the college of magic, and had a student test spells on me. The game glitched, and I was invisible! At least, I couldn't see myself. But everyone else could. All that had happened was I didn't have a character model anymore. It was so annoying, especially since I spent the thousands of septims to make my ebony armor and look the part of a death knight.

I searched online, and could only find a fix for the PC version, which was basically to enter the console and enter a command to change your character model.

However, I finally tried the shout "Become Ethereal" and it made me actually invisible. Once it wore of, I was back to normal. Pretty disappointing, Bethesda!

  - Sapper Woody

Creation vs Evolution: Part 1 - An Introduction

Out here in Afghanistan, I come into contact with many soldiers of differing views concerning religion, politics, etc. One subject that comes up frequently is Creation vs Evolution. Since I am a proponent of intelligent design, the conversations can get intense.

However, I generally startle people by making a bold claim. I simply tell them that even though I believe in Intelligent Design, I don’t think it can be proven. I then follow up with the statement that I don’t think evolution can be proven either. Both are accepted based on relevant evidence as interpreted by the receiver. There are actually many valid points on both sides.

What I hate is when someone sticks to one side or the other so vehemently that they start using arguments that are obviously fallible. This causes them to lose credibility with the very people they are trying to convince to their cause. As in any debate/discussion, strawman arguments and red herrings abound on both sides.

Being the stoic thinker that I am, I like to introduce both proofs and fallacies to both sides of the argument and then allow the thinking person to decide for themselves which they think is correct. As stated before, I have personally chosen intelligent design; based both on the evidences presented to me and my religious background. So, much of what I will be talking about will seem to be slanted in that direction, although I will make a genuine effort to remain unbiased, and simply discuss evidences as they appear.

Many people think that to change a hardcore evolutionist’s thinking, they simply need to throw scripture after scripture at them until they see the light. However, in my experience, many times (if not all) a hardcore evolutionist is either atheist, agnostic, or believes the Bible to be figurative rather than literal. If someone holds these viewpoints, you cannot convince them using something that they believe is false already. The only way to convince someone is to point out flaws in their reasoning.

To believe in intelligent design requires a belief in a being of greater power than humans. It does not necessarily necessitate a belief in a god, just a being or beings that have greater power than humans. If someone is adamantly opposed to this idea, they will not accept any evidence of intelligent design as adequate. However, I will be posting about the different proofs we have on both sides, and try to point out how they help one argument or the other, or hurt one argument or the other.

Keep checking back in for more posts!

   - Sapper Woody

Breaking Games: Leveling Skills in Skyrim

So, I was playing Skyrim, and I did what any responsible hardcore player would do. I looked at all the perks I could buy, and decided what I was going to buy before I leveled up even once. That kept me from going about willy-nilly and having a horrible hybrid player.

The problem is this: I needed to reach level 52 to get all the perks I wanted, but just playing through only gets you to about level 30ish, depending on how you play. So, I decided to break the game a little bit, and level more skills that I don’t normally use, or that are hard to level up.

NOTE: You can use the stones to level up your skills faster, and fast travel to the stones to change which skills level up quicker. However, this will lead to tougher enemies without the payoff of better items/gear early on. Use them if you want to, but just keep that in mind.

Credit for a couple of these goes to Stephen Johnson at www.g4tv.com

Skill trainers: There is a huge exploit that needs to be addressed right at the beginning. This little exploit can actually be used on all skills to level them quickly. There are some restrictions (some forward thinking by the developers, no doubt), but the higher the skill is already, the less restricting it gets.

Basically, you need to use the exploit listed below to get your pickpocket skill up. And then go to any skill trainer and train. The nice thing is, once you train at a skill trainer, the amount you paid goes into their pickable inventory, meaning that you can get your gold back by pickpocketing them. The restraint is that you can only train any combination of skills 5 times per level, meaning that you can’t do this indefinitely without actually playing. However, once the skill is high enough, leveling the skill will increase your level greatly.

Pickpocket: I suggest doing this at the very start of the game. Make your way to Riften, a city in the far south east part of the map. There you will be given a task by a random person. Perform the task or not, and you get an invitation to join the Thieves’ guild. Once there, there is a pickpocket trainer. You can use him to level up pickpocketing pretty quickly. If you reach the 5 train limit, simply go out into Riften and pick pocket everyone you can until you level up. Then repeat. Once you reach 51 in pick pocketing (or any skill), however, it gets very hard to steal your gold back from him without getting caught, due to the jump in price for training. Also, make sure to save your game after every successful steal.

Sneak: The natural way to level this skill is simply sneak everywhere. There’s really no way to break this, other than the skill trainer / pick pocket idea. But, as long as you are sneaking, you should level up ok. The first option for the next tip also works for sneaking.

One handed, Two handed, Archery: There are ways to exploit this, and I will explain them, but these should level automatically as you use them. But, to speed things up, there are a few ways to do this. First, you can start right at the beginning of the game. When you are following your rescuer (whoever you chose) through a cave, you come upon a place where there is a bear, and he gives you the option to sneak around it. At that point, he simply crouches, and waits for you to choose to sneak past the bear, or fight it. Instead of doing either, you can hit him over and over again to level your skills. This doesn’t work as well for archery (use the second option for archery), simply because you don’t have many arrows at this point. If you crouch and hit him in the back, this will also level your sneak skill.

The second option for these skills is to buy a horse. A horse will help level all weapon skills, as well as destruction and restoration magic. You can hit the horse over and over again (or use magic), and let it heal (or heal it, to get your restoration up) and keep going.

The third option is to fight enemies that won’t deal much damage to you, and turn the difficulty all the way up, so it takes a while to kill them. This is the most risky way to do this.

Destruction: Again, you can use the horse idea, or you can simply let it level naturally by fighting enemies. Or, you can cast spells on your companion at the beginning of the game. Alternatively, you can join the companions, and early on you will be given the task of fighting a character. If you use destruction magic on him, he won’t retaliate saying something about the companions not using magic.

Restoration, Alteration: If you quest for the College of Magic, you can eventually gain access to a spell which turns health into magicka. You simply wield that spell on one hand, and a restoration spell on the other, and cast them simultaneously. One will heal the damage done by the other, and one will take that health and make magicka to fuel the spells. This isn’t exactly a one-for-one swap, so you’ll have to rest every once in a while.

Speechcraft, Blacksmithing, Enchanting: You can use some materials to make iron daggers (1 leather straps and 1 iron ingot). This is the quickest way to leveling blacksmithing. Then, go to the enchanter’s table, and enchant the daggers. Sell them, and use the money to buy more materials to make more daggers and enchantments. Make sure you sell the daggers one at a time, as your speechcraft levels per transaction, not per item. If you do this, you should make some money as well.

Alchemy: There is not an easy way to level this. Just pick up all the ingredients you can, and use them to make potions, and it will level naturally. Alternatively, you can try buying ingredients, making potions, and selling the potions to buy more ingredients. Just experiment with which ingredients make the potions that sell for more than the ingredients. You can make money, level alchemy, and level speechcraft in one shot.

Light Armor, Heavy Armor, Block: These are as simple as letting people hit you. Skyrim uses a system that levels your armor based upon how much damage you take, not how many times you are hit, so if you turn the difficulty to easy, you won’t level as quickly. However, if you can find a ring of regeneration, you can regenerate health as quickly as the enemy is taking it. This way you can just leave it on overnight to level your armor. If you rubber band the block button and leave it, you can do that too. But you can’t level armor and blocking together. Any damage that is negated due to a successful block does not count towards leveling your armor.

Lockpicking: This one isn’t easy to exploit. You just have to pick locks. Fortunately, you can pick some houses’ locks, enter, and then exit, and the house will be locked again. Make sure to stock up on lockpicks. Another good thing is that even failing to pick a lock will level your skill some.

Illusion: Simply buy the spell “muffle”, and then cast it a lot. Too easy.

Conjuration: Buy the spell “soul trap” and then kill something. Then cast the spell on the dead body hundreds of times.

Enjoy!

   - Sapper Woody

Video Game Review: Modern Warfare 3

So, as a Call of Duty fan, I did my duty and bought MW3 as soon as it came out. At first, I felt like I was playing MW2 all over again. Then the game went into some amazing areas that I thought were incredible, if unrealistic. Specifically, I was enthralled by the level where you play as a security guard on a jumbo jet, and the jet starts to crash during an extended firefight. As the jet is plummeting towards the ground, those inside expeience zero gravity, and you are floating around in the jet while stil engaged in a firefight. Then the jet levels out, and you regain gravity just in time to see the back half of the plane ripped off as you hit the ground.

All in all, the single player experience is very similar to MW2, with the action being more unrealistic, yet at the same time more intense.

Multiplayer is a retooled edition of the past COD games, although the kill streak system has changed for the better. Instead of choosing your regular kill streak rewards, which require a certain number of kills without dying to activate, you may now choose from three types of kill streaks. One is basically the same; get kills without dying, and be rewarded with poweful things to get even more kills. The second are "support" rewards. These rewards don't require you to get kills without dying, jut a certain number of kills total. These rewards are more geared towards helping out the team; UAVs, body armor, etc.

Then there is the "Specialist" kill streak rewards. This is arguably the most powerful kill streak reward tree, as it allows you to get more perks. You choose your main three perks like normal, then you choose three more perks to get at 2, 4, and 6 kills. If you manage to get 8 kills without dying, you are awarded all the perks you have unlocked so far, making you a powerhouse killing machine. I have seen video footage of people getting 8 kills, then going on to destroy their opponents. Of course, if you can get 8 kills without dying, you are pretty much destroying your opponents already.

Of special note is that the kill streaks recycle during your lifespan. That is, in the past, once you got your highest kill streak reward, you had to die in order to get them again. In MW3, if you get your highest kill streak reward, it starts over. You can actually get a helicopter, etc, multiple times in one life if you are good enough.

Another note is the MOAB, or "Mother Of All Bombs". In MW2, one of the kill streak rewards you could choose was the match ending nuke, awarded at 25 kills in one life. In MW3, you don't get to choose this as an option, but if you manage to get 25 kills in one life, then you get the MOAB. This kills everyone on the opposing team, but does not end the match. This is only awarded once per life, however. Getting 50 kills does give you another one.

All in all, MW3 is what we've come to expect from the MW series, with a few nice additions that set it apart from the rest.

All gave some, these 3 gave all.

Recently out here in Afghanistan, I attended a "Ramp Ceremony" for 3 EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) men. To understand EOD, think of the movie "Hurtlocker", only that movie was retarded and unrealistic. But EOD's job is basically to get rid of IEDs and assess explosives for different intelligence purposes.

A ramp ceremony is a solemn time, as it is a ceremony where they load bodies of fallen military personel into an aircraft to be sent home. My estimate was that about 200 to 250 people showed up for this ceremony. That night, I went back to my room and wrote a little poem about this time.

I am not that great at poetry, prose being more of a strong point for me. I went with a different rhyming pattern than I've tried before, but I think the message came through more with this pattern than if I had stuck with a traditional poetry pattern. Here it is:

They walked past slowly, solemnly. Their precious cargo in hand.

All had agreed to serve, but no one wants to die in a foreign land.

A C130 was there,

ready to sail through the air.

There were not Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen or Marines tonight.

Just Brothers and Sisters in Arms, fighting the same fight.

4 Uniforms in that land,

All fighting for the same flag.

“Detail, Attention!” A voice rang loud and clear in the cold.

Then we all snapped to, our thoughts on true heroes bold.

“Let us pray,” a chaplain said.

Then Psalms 23 was read.

“Present Arms!” the command came from somewhere to us.

And they marched past our lines, sad thoughts going through us.

We had fought alongside

These heroes who had died.

When I see a flag flying, I am proud you can be sure.

I fight for “Old Glory” and to preserve our future.

But I see now differently

Than what I once used to see.

A flag’s greatest honor is not flying up high for all to see.

But to honor heroes who died, like these flags honored these three.

And to show what they gave

When lives down they laid.

   - Woody