Real Science Friday: Bees Think Faster than a Super Computer!

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RSF: Bees Think Faster than a Super Computer!

This is the show from Friday October 7th, 2011.

SUMMARY:



* Bees, Pollen, Brains and Sea Turtles: Real Science Friday co-hosts Fred Williams and Bob Enyart report on stunning articles in the Creation magazine's Fall 2011 issue. Honey bees solve the Least-Distance "traveling salesman" problem far faster than supercomputers can, by determining effortlessly the least distance to travel while stopping at hundreds of flowers. Interestingly, BEES WOULD NOT HAVE HAD TO EVOLVE THIS EXTRAORDINARY ABILITY to survive.

* Rock from Allegedly One Billion Years Before Plants Has Pollen: Over the decades evolutionists have discounted pollen in polymorphic Precambrian strata claiming that pollen fossils wouldn't survive the heat that changed the rock, but in 2007 a scientific paper described “remarkably preserved” fossil spores in rock in the French Alps that had undergone high-grade metamorphism.

* 125 Trillion Synapses in ONE BRAIN
: Each human brain has 125 trillion synapses, and each has about a thousand switches! Thus a Stanford computer scientist recently said that each human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and internet connections on earth! And that we are only using a portion of our brain is evidence that it was not formed by any neo-Darwinist mechanisms, because natural selection can only work on features that give survival advantages, and it could not over-engineered the human brain to give us enormous excess capacity (the kind of excess capacity that is evidenced through the accidental retrieval of latent function by savant syndrome, extraordinary capabilities which are apparently latent in all human beings).

* RSF Exclusive: Darwinism is Backfiring! It turns out that Charles Darwin unwittingly pulled a fast one on atheists. He's been leading godless governments to spend billions of dollars exploring the glory of God's creation! Atheists would likely have refused to investigate the cosmos if they realized that they were demonstrating the designs, creative power, and brilliance of God Almighty. But because Darwin has misled them to assume that they are generating nothing but mountains of materialistic measurements, instead, they are filling the world's libraries with the evidence of God as Creator! As the Bible says, "since the creation of the world God's invisible attributes (His existence, eternity, and entity) are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse." Darwinism is backfiring.

* Sea Turtles Don't Just Navigate by Magnetic Field, THEY BLOW US AWAY: World-famous evolutionist J.B.S. Haldane in a 1949 debate titled, Is Evolution a Myth? replied on page 90 to Douglas Dewar, “There are, of course, difficulties in the theory of evolution. … I agree with you that some processes, such as the evolution of the mammalian ear bones, probably occurred by sudden leaps. … It is never, however, necessary to postulate a leap which would imply prevision by a designer. That is why one finds no example of various mechanisms, such as the wheel and magnet, which would be useless till fairly perfect.” Even monarch butterflies use magnetism to navigate from Canada to Mexico. But the sea turtles, now, that's a different story! Not only can they determine lattitude, but longitude, which is the most extraordinary capability! And as Dr. Jonathan Sarfati points out, there are extraordinary wheels in ATP sythase and in bacterial flagellum for example. If Darwinism were a valid scientific theory, scientists should be able to explain how to falsify it; but it seems able to expand infinitely and to absorb virtually any fact, leading thinkers like David Berlinsky to question in Ben Stein's movie Expelled, whether Darwinism even qualifies as a valid scientific theory.



Today's Resource
: If you enjoy the science you hear about on our fast-paced RSF radio shows, you'll really love the books, audio, and DVD science materials in our online store's Science Department! And this DVD, Living Fossils, by Dr. Carl Werner, is absolutely stunning! You owe it to yourself, and your loved ones, to watch this DVD! Whether a shark, leaf, or crab, living fossils are a challenge for evolutionary theorists and create a fascinating debate among scholars. Do they indicate a younger earth than thought, placing the millions of years timeline of evolution in question? Or do they represent a deep mystery?
 

Tyrathca

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Honey bees solve the Least-Distance "traveling salesman" problem far faster than supercomputers can, by determining effortlessly the least distance to travel while stopping at hundreds of flowers. Interestingly, BEES WOULD NOT HAVE HAD TO EVOLVE THIS EXTRAORDINARY ABILITY to survive.
The ability to gather food more efficiently and quickly does not provide an advantage? Particularly in times of food shortage?

* 125 Trillion Synapses in ONE BRAIN[/b]: Each human brain has 125 trillion synapses, and each has about a thousand switches! Thus a Stanford computer scientist recently said that each human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and internet connections on earth! And that we are only using a portion of our brain is evidence that it was not formed by any neo-Darwinist mechanisms, because natural selection can only work on features that give survival advantages, and it could not over-engineered the human brain to give us enormous excess capacity (the kind of excess capacity that is evidenced through the accidental retrieval of latent function by savant syndrome, extraordinary capabilities which are apparently latent in all human beings).
It's a myth that we don't use our brains full capacities. Savants are those whose brains developed in such a way that suits them to certain task extraordinarily well, it is also generally at the noticeable cost of abilities at other tasks. The "latent" abilities you mention are likely based on the experiment referenced in the wikipedia article where they mimic this by briefly suppressing a part of the brain (which would inevitably lead to deficits in functions associated with it) thereby imitating many savants brains.

For the benefit there is generally a cost and evolution seems to have led us down the middle road.
 

Stripe

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The ability to gather food more efficiently and quickly does not provide an advantage? Particularly in times of food shortage?
That sentence is probably missing a qualifier or two. :)

But there seems no rational pathway for such an ability to evolve. A single random change to the genetic code that builds the brain will never produce a step toward better functionality that will be visible to natural selection and the many random changes that would be required have no chance of lining up without a selection means.

It's a myth that we don't use our brains full capacities. Savants are those whose brains developed in such a way that suits them to certain task extraordinarily well, it is also generally at the noticeable cost of abilities at other tasks. The "latent" abilities you mention are likely based on the experiment referenced in the wikipedia article where they mimic this by briefly suppressing a part of the brain (which would inevitably lead to deficits in functions associated with it) thereby imitating many savants brains.For the benefit there is generally a cost and evolution seems to have led us down the middle road.
The point was that there are these advanced capabilities available. Evolution does not have a need for such redundancy. What evolutionary advantage is there in selecting for people with a "noticeable cost of abilities at other tasks"?

Did you listen to the show?
 

Frayed Knot

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Be sure to tune in to Non-Sequitur Radio next Friday for another edition of...

"It's complicated. Therefore a magic man done it."
 
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