The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw

stemnitsa writes: "Michael Ruse is, somewhat unusually, a professor of both philosophy and zoology. In this book he looks at how evolutionary thought developed between 1830 and 1875. The book was originally published in 1979; the text has not been revised for the new edition but Ruse has included an Afterword in which he looks at new research that has come out in the intervening years. There has been an immense outpouring of publications about Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution since his book first appeared but it still merits an honourable place, both for its insights and for its readability, enhanced by touches of humour. To some extent it covers the same territory as Peter Bowler's "Evolution: the history of an idea", but its focus is narrower in time while providing more in-depth discussion of the philosophical and religious ideas of Darwin's contemporaries." The remainder of stemnitsa's review follows; this book sounds like a good one to pair with Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution, reviewed last week by Danny Yee. The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw author Michael Ruse pages xiv + 346 publisher The University of Chicago Press rating 7 reviewer Anthony Campbell ISBN 0226731693 summary Darwin's ideas did not emerge from a vacuum; there were important forerunners. Ruse provides a valuable insight into the intellectual climate of the time. He makes it clear that to think of science and religion as being mutually opposed in the nineteenth century is an over-simplification; there were important ways in which religion actually helped the cause of science.

Ruse is particularly good on the personalities of those involved. They were indeed a colourful bunch. They included William Whewell, Adam Sedgwick, Baden Powell (father of the founder of the Scout movement), John FW Herschel (son of the famous astronomer William Herschel), Charles Lyell, Richard Owen, and Charles Babbage, better known for his invention of the calculating engine, as well as Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley. Many of these, especially those belonging to the older generation, were clergymen; it was impossible to be a Fellow of a college at Oxford or Cambridge at the time unless one was in Holy Orders. This inevitably coloured their views on evolution, though not always in the way one might expect.

Popular accounts of the debate about evolutionary thought in the nineteenth century often convey the impression of a straightforward conflict between secularism and religion, in which scientific secularism emerged triumphant. As Ruse makes clear, this is a considerable over-simplification: the relation between religion and science was in fact very complex, and in some ways religion actually helped the cause of science. Other factors, philosophical and social, were also involved, and Ruse's claim is that all of these elements have to be given due weight if the development of evolutionism is to be understood.

That profound changes in intellectual attitudes occurred in the nineteenth century there can be no doubt. In 1844, when Robert Chambers published his "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation", in which he argued the case for organic evolution, hardly any serious scientists accepted its main message, but when Charles Darwin published "The Origin" in 1859 his main claim was quickly accepted by almost all scientists concerned with the origin of organisms. In part, this was a consequence of the difference in the scientific standing of the two authors, but there were other reasons as well and it is these that Ruse seeks to elucidate.

First, there were scientific reasons to accept evolution. It made sense of the geographical distribution of species, such as finches and tortoises on the Galapagos Islands, which Darwin described and which was hard to explain on any other assumption. Also, by the 1860s more was known about the fossil record than had been known in 1844, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to doubt that progression had occurred during geological time. Darwin was therefore able to draw on a more ample arsenal of scientific facts; indeed, he had made significant contributions to that arsenal himself.

Of course, Darwin was not merely advocating evolution as a process, he put forward a mechanism by which it could occur. Chambers had not provided a plausible cause for evolution, but Darwin did, with his mechanism of natural selection. However, this idea had its problems: estimates of the age of the earth seemed not to allow enough time for evolution, and many people doubted if natural selection could be powerful enough to produce new species as opposed to mere variations. Even T.H.Huxley, "Darwin's bulldog", was relatively uninterested in natural selection and tended to downplay its importance. But field naturalists such as Henry Walter Bates found it invaluable as an explanation for insect mimicry and his work was cited by Darwin in later issues of "The Origin".

The second area of change was in philosophy. Many of the older scientists were idealists, Platonists, who favoured the view that species were immutable Types. Huxley, on the other hand, was not a Platonist and criticized his older colleagues on that ground. This change was both a cause and a consequence of other changes, in religious thought and in society at large, that were occurring at this time. Ruse points to innovations in the educational system leading to a reduced emphasis on the Classics and a weakening in the influence of religion. Not surprisingly in view of his professional background, Ruse pays considerable attention to the philosophical principles espoused by the main participants in the debate. There was a prevailing assumption, to which Darwin himself largely subscribed, that physics, and especially astronomy, provided the explanatory model to which other sciences ought to aspire.

The third class of change affected religion. Chambers had been attacked on religious grounds: he was held to have threatened the special position of man and to have left no room for God's design. Similar criticisms were made of Darwin but less strongly. However, religion, Ruse believes, also helped Darwinism. The argument from design prepared people's minds for evolutionism, while thinkers such as Baden Powell thought of God as working through unbroken natural laws rather than through miracles.

In the 1830s and 1840s religion was a thorny problem for many people. Partly this was a reaction to science; Ruse thinks that the attempt to reconcile science and revelation was a particularly British preoccupation (as perhaps it still is). And conventional religion was also under threat from another source: German Biblical criticism. As a result, some prominent clergymen, including Lyell, had moved a long way towards Deism (natural as opposed to revealed religion).

Lyell is a particularly interesting figure in the present context. His "Principles of Geology" accompanied Darwin on his voyage in the Beagle and had a major influence on his thought. As a Deist, he was unhappy about introducing miracles to explain the origin of species; unlike Whewell, who thought it was compatible with science. Ruse sums this up neatly by saying that Lyell wanted a world left alone by God, in which organisms struggle for survival under the threat of extinction, whereas Whewell wanted to see God hovering protectively over his creation.

Fourthly, there were social and political influences. In the 1830s there was a real fear that revolution might spread to Britain from abroad; by 1860 this was no longer the case. And in the second half of the century it was possible for a man to become a professional scientist without private means and without taking Holy Orders: a change that helped to weaken the influence of religion.

It is difficult to describe all these developments without falling into circularity, because each type of cause influenced, and was influenced by, the others, but in a way this is precisely Ruse's point. He insists that there were many different threads intertwining among themselves and that it is misleading to oversimplify the argument by concentrating on what appear to be the "real" issues. I think he makes a convincing case for this claim. He finds no need to alter his views in this reissue of the book, as he explains in the Afterword, though I was glad to see that he softens his earlier criticism of Huxley, whom I have always rather liked. I was even more glad to read that he strongly dissociates himself from "social constructivism" in the history of science. He states emphatically that "Charles Darwin was telling us real truths about a real world". There is no question of organic evolution being a human-created fiction.

Ruse is, however, rather despondent about the present position of evolution studies as an academic discipline. He is concerned that evolution is often seen to be "popular science" and is usually linked with ecology, instead of being accorded the importance it deserves. There is indeed a paradox here, which Ruse perhaps fails to bring out fully. He mentions that in the USA today there are ten times as many departments of molecular biology as of evolution, but he does not point out that it is impossible to understand molecular biology adequately unless it is seen in an evolutionary context. The interesting question, therefore, is why this fact is not always recognized.

Much the same failure to take account of Darwinism exists within medicine. The origins of many diseases can only be understood from an evolutionary viewpoint (Charlton BG; Nesse RM, Williams GC). Immunology, which is basic to modern medicine, is an evolutionary science through and through (Tauber AI). And yet "Darwinian medicine" is hardly a dozen years old; even today, few doctors are familiar with the term. There is a sense in which the Darwinian revolution has still hardly begun.

You can purchase The Darwinian Revolution from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

could it be ?

[Captain Peacock]

maybe

first post :)

[liquid2k2]

first post :)

Re:first post :)

[windex]

I have a 5 digit UID, as such, I am greater than you.

Re:first post :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot golf!

Lucifer is an asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes he is.

It's been 19.99 seconds since you hit 'reply'!

x - Infinity

[RebelTycoon]

Statement:

I will be a zillionaire
-------------------
x -> Inifinity (time)

With an infinite amount of time... Evolution is possible...

and that's BULLSHIT! Hence so is MACRO evolution!!!

Re:x - Infinity

[Anonymous Coward]

go fuck yourself you christian fundamentalist fuck wad.

Re:x - Infinity

[akaina]

Dude I agree, but with a twist.

If indeed we have had infinite time, and infinite combinations are irrelivent within a body of matter during that infinite duration, we must admit that not only will evolution happen just by chance 1 time, but an infinite amount of times. Furthermore, it must all come to an end in the middle of the 1960's by way of a random pink elephant an infinite amount of times as well.

But my problem isn't with the elephant, or the odds of that happening (no matter how huge).

Here's the real question: Where did the matter come from, and who the hell is controlling this massive bruteforce matter-based algorithm we call the third dimmension????

Think outside the mobeus strip.

Re:x - Infinity

[EnderWiggnz]

controlling, no... set in motion, yes... made the clock, wound it up and let it go... only interferring when absolutely needed...

Re:x - Infinity

[akaina]

kiduv like a programmer... or atleast the ones I'm used to.

QuantumFF@GOD$gcc -dumpmachine | /usr/ssl/man/misc/human_life.out

Re:x - Infinity

[lmenke]

The problem that you have is that you have no understanding of evolution. You do know that you dislike what you think are evolutionary concepts. You should examine your reasons for your discord with this fundamental branch of science. It is easy to say, for example, that because you do not like cubist art that you dislike all art. Likewise, some study of evolution would benefit your understanding and perhaps mitigate your feelings towards the subject. Now by study, I do not mean tracks and articles by those who do not like evolution. Almost all are based on ignorance, dishonesty and fraud. The study of evolution is an excellent example of the application of logic, reason and analysis of data without using high level mathematics such as Maxwell's equations for electricity and magnetism or Einstein's theory of gravity (General Relativity). Read some books that give a pedagogical explanation. Good luck Lorenz H. Menke, Jr. Lockheed Martin NE&SS

Re:x - Infinity

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like saying, you need to read up on crack to understand it. And because you didn't read up on it, you can't appreciate it and have no right to dislike it. What load of crap! I don't need to read up on something to know it's just not right. There is plenty of evidence to shoot enough holes in it not to give it much more than a simple read. Every day I see something new that thwarts the theory of evolution. Read the previous Slashdot article today about HIV NOT INFECTING CHIMPS. Why? If we come from them then why don't they get HIV? Why is it that a species that is supposedly us isnt affected by the same diseases we are? Yes there are variants, but there is also a feline variant. Does that make us related to cats too?

You don't have to be a scholar on something to dislike it. You only have to be smarter than an ape to know when something just doesn't jive. What's shocking to me is the fact that you have read up on it and still believe it. It appeared as though our species got more intelligent as we evolved, but I guess not.

Re:x - Infinity

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather interesting book on evolution: http://www.chick.com/catalog/books/0123.asp. If you don't want to read it, I'll summarize. "It is impossible for a living cell to form from the random interaction of non-living molecules." It goes into quite a lot of detail about how organic molecules actually behave in the real world.

Re:x - Infinity

[lmenke]

Perhaps my example of cubist art did not illustrate my point clearly. In saying that you do not like such art does not give you knowledge to reject the entire subject. I mean the following: While I personally do not care much for that style of art. It is a matter of personal taste. However, if someone explained the subtleties, then perhaps I would appreciate the subject better. A further example. An often used criticism of religion is that there is no God hence the theological component collapses and we can dispense with religion all together. Now from a logic view there is some validity in this argument, in that religions (for example, Christianity) are based on the existence, belief, and faith in God and that the theological consequences follow. If this central pillar were to fall, then indeed the theological part of religions would collapse. Instead I would ask the question this way; let's accept God, now what are the consequences of God, the theological, social, and cultural components. How does this evolve, how does this affect the way we live, etc. In this approach, I am learning about a subject that I may think is in error. I am asking questions.

Now you can continue to dislike the subject of evolution. Perhaps you need to examine the reasons why. Evolution theory is a major branch of science. As in all branches of science they consists of large numbers of facts, hypothesis and theories connecting those facts. The theories give it context. Since scientific theories are interconnected, i.e., not isolated disjoint little islands of a few facts and theories, then the consequence of falsification of a well tested theory has consequences on all other branches. Indeed there are cases where there have been faulty assumptions that have been corrected that required reevaluation of calculations and conclusions across several fields of science because of this interconnectedness.

As in all branches of science the hypothesis and theories are constantly being updated, modified, and verified. The set of explanatory theories called evolution are indeed changing. Evolution is not in doubt, however the details of the mechanisms and interrelationships are still being worked out. As more data becomes available and the technology improves the details of evolution will become clearer.

So indeed, in this case you need to understand the subject so that you can make constructive criticisms, analysis, and verifiable hypothesis. If you do not want to learn the subject that you apparently so detest and you wish to continue with your unsupported diatribes, then you will remain ignorant. No one should listen to you on the subject because you know noting about it.

Several good examples that illustrate evolution and its principles are: the books by Stephen Jay Gould, "The Panda's Thumb", "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes", "The Mismeasure of Man", the journal "Creation/Evolution", the book "The Moral Animal Why We Are The Way We Are: The New Science Of Evolutionary Psychology", many articles in the magazine "Natural History" such as 7/01-8/01 issue, Scientific American "Human Ancestors", the September 1993 issue "Life, Death and The Immune System", and many articles in the pier review journals.

I should add that I can't stand Stephen Jay Gould's politics for he was a socialist, yet his scientific writings as illustrated in his books are excellent.

So yes you do not have to be a scholar to understand fundamentals of a subject, however, you do have to know something about the subject so that you can make constructive and intelligent criticisms. You have a decent reading list, so get started.

Lorenz H. Menke, Jr.

Re:x - Infinity

[lmenke]

As I indicated in my previous two responses, there are many who for whatever reason do not like the concepts of evolution. One popular method is to write about the supposed probabilities against evolution. Now throw in lots of freshman chemistry, lots of probability calculations, lots of references from the same ignorant anti-evolution writings and you have an impressive book that will fool many who once again, do not understand the basic science. Just like some of the diet programs available that are fraudulent. They produce studies, testimonials, doctor so and so (argument by authority), lots of references, etc. These arguments fool those who do not understand the subject. For example, one of my favorite arguments that illustrate the fraud behind the anti-evolutionist statistical arguments is the hemoglobin molecule. The human hemoglobin molecule consists of about 100 amino acids. Immediately we get the calculation that to reproduce human hemoglobin from 100 random amino acids is one chance in 100 factorial or about 1 in 10 ^ 156. Hence the anti-evolutionist loudly declares that evolution is impossible. This argument is then repeated endlessly in other books, articles and arguments. Now, this is where knowledge of the subject comes in handy. Hemoglobin's function is to carry oxygen through the blood stream and deliver it to cells. The key here is the functionality of the molecule, not its make up. When we examine the hemoglobin in other animals we find that they are a little bit different, yet their functions are identical. Lets take this 100 amino acid hemoglobin molecule and switch any pair of amino acids. Has the functionality changed? No. How many possible pairs are there: 100 * 99 or about 10 ^ 4. Also we over counted the number of possible combinations from 100 amino acids because there are many duplicates. Continuing, swap any three amino acids. Does the functionality change with all these possible combinations? A little bit. Some combinations will be more efficient and other less. Continuing we find that the odds are not 1 in 10 ^ 154, but a number much smaller. Hence the likelihood of this combination being formed in this manner is probable. There is a basics assumption in this calculation that does not reflect how nature works. Nature (cells) does not take 100 random amino acids and assemble them into some functional form. Structures are built up from much smaller combinations. Assumes a 5 amino acid combination. Applying the anti-evolutions fraudulent computation we have 5 factorial or 120 possible way of assembling this molecule. Certainly no problem in producing this material. Nature then takes a functional 5 amino acid structures and through the evolutionary process adds additional acids resulting in new, improved or entirely different functionality. If this functionality proves useful, then it is more likely to be adapted. Once again, you do not escape learning the science. Lorenz H. Menke, Jr.

COMMON SENSE WARNINGS WHEN DEALING WITH A UFO

[Anonymous Coward]

This is guide is written by slashdot readers for slashdot readers. Got a suggestion? suggest it by replying this discussion thread

Useful Advice:

1. Do not touch or attempt to touch a UFO that has landed. Passing through the Earth's atmosphere the skin of the craft will be hot. There is also a possibility of radiation. There is also a chance of steam being produced from the heated hull at the landing site.

2. Do not stand under a hovering UFO at low altitude. There is a possibility of radiation danger.

3. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CONTACT ALIENS if they appear, any movement on your part may constitute an act of aggression. If possible, back away VERY slowly. Make no gestures what so ever.

4. Note the shape and size of the craft, use nearby objects for a size comparison.

5. If you can take some photographs but ... BE VERY CAREFUL. Flash photography may be seen as an act of agression, and could even have harmful effects on the aliens. The use of a tripod might also be confused with a dangerous weapon.

6. Do not touch any artifact from an alien spacecraft, the artifact may be dangerous, leave this to the authorites.

7. Do not attempt sex with the aliens. Alien fluids might have acid or other undesirables. by TrollBurger #575126

8. Get away from the area QUICKLY. Inform the local authorites or the military.

9. If you a wound or illness, present it to the aliens in a manner that shows you are hurt. Many aliens have healing powers in their appendages. by scotch #102596

10. Do not attempt to shoot at alien craft. Not only is this a direct act of agression, but many alien ships employ powerful sheilding which can deflect a bullet or shot directly towards you, which may lead to injuries.

Less Useful Advice:

1. Offer the aliens a burger. They've just been on a trip that must have taken many millions of lightyears, they're probably hungry. by TrollBurger #575126

2. Don't tell the aliens about Slashdot, Jerry Springer, and America. The aliens are probably trying to find intelligent life.

3. To aid future human/alien dialog, attempt to communicate the rotation period of an electron in a hydrogen atom, using dance. This is the intergalactic Roseta Stone.

4. Attempt to sneeze on the aliens. This is just to show that "War of the Worlds" was a CROCK OF SHIT!

5. Explain to them about area 51, and how we shot down, and experimented on one of their own. (THIS MIGHT BE DANGEROUS).

6. Offer to show them an anal probe (if you have one handy). (OPTIONAL)

7. If the alien seems upset, offer to rub its head gently. Not only will this ease a tense situation, it will bring you good luck. by scotch #102596

Of course it didn't come first

[ObviousGuy]

I believe that Lamarck was the first to postulate Evolution in the sense that we are familiar with it now. Namely, that if a trait is beneficial to a species that it will be passed on from generation to the next.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[AyeRoxor!]

"Namely, that if a trait is beneficial to a species that it will be passed on from generation to the next."

That is not evolution. this is a COMMON mistake that should be dealt with accordingly. What you have referred to is "selective breeding" or "selective processes," sometimes referred to confusingly as "selective evolution." This is what has given us thousands of breeds of dogs, all from the original wolves. But they're all still canines. This states that a species will get stronger, but it cannot explain how a species would turn into another species, such as a lizard into a bird. That's just people who say they're alike, and then try to find stuff to back that up, non-objectively.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[mofolotopo]

Not only that, he actually had evolutionism in his blood. Check this out:

"Nurs'd by warm sun-beams in primeval caves
Organic Life began beneath the waves...
Hence without parent by spontaneous birth
Rise the first specks of animated earth"

That's part of a poem written by Darwin's grandfather Erasmus long before Chuck himself was born. Fascinating, huh? Anyway, as you mentioned, it's really not even remotely correct to credit Darwin with the advent of evolutionary thought. His contribution was the mechanism of natural selection, which stood up to criticism much more successfully than Lamarck's ideas.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't his name Larmack? John Larmack, specifically.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[mofolotopo]

"This states that a species will get stronger, but it cannot explain how a species would turn into another species, such as a lizard into a bird. That's just people who say they're alike, and then try to find stuff to back that up, non-objectively."

Wow, that's a blatant misstatement of fact. The relationships between organisms are almost entirely determined by statistical methods which examine the differences in molecular makeup these days. The methods are far from perfect (it's an extremely nasty NP-Complete problem), but they're also far from arbitrary or subjective. Systematics as you have described it hasn't been in common practice for thirty years or more.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me what fact your referring to?

And where it's stated to be a fact?

Sorry for AC, but 2 of my on-topic posts today have been modded down. Kids must be out of school.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[blue trane]

Aren't we (humans) now experiencing Lamarckian evolution? A useful technology that someone invents is passed on by writing...

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[ProlificSage]

I believe that Lamarck was the first to postulate Evolution in the sense that we are familiar with it now.

IIRC, at least one of Lamarck's theories was discredited by anthropologists/biologists because he postulated that if a creature developed a (non-inherited) trait which was beneficial, that trait would be passed on to offspring directly. This is not the case.

Example: If I spend all my time working out and developing my physique, that developed trait is not passed on to my offspring. If my son never lifts a weight, he's not going to be as muscular, because that was a trait I developed during my lifetime, not one with which I was born.

Not sure what other theories Lamarck may have had on the subject.

Hopefully someone more up-to-date on current anthropological thought can back me up.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[blue trane]

IIRC, at least one of Lamarck's theories was discredited by anthropologists/biologists because he postulated that if a creature developed a (non-inherited) trait which was beneficial, that trait would be passed on to offspring directly. This is not the case.

(As mentioned in another post,) Lamarkian evolution applies to humans. If I invent something that provides a survival advantage, I can pass it on to others (doesn't even have to be my offspring) through writing.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[EllisDees]

There is nothing to stop one species from becoming another given enough time and enough "selective breeding". Nothing.

People who argue against evolution usually don't have a clue what the mechanisms of evolution actually are.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[AyeRoxor!]

"People who argue against evolution usually don't have a clue what the mechanisms of evolution actually are."

Funny, same goes for those who argue for it :)

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[AyeRoxor!]

There is nothing to stop one species from becoming another given enough time and enough "selective breeding". Nothing.

There's nothing to stop them from becoming ATM machines either, given enough time. That's why it's such a rediculous argument.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[foofboy]

This states that a species will get stronger, but it cannot explain how a species would turn into another species, such as a lizard into a bird.

I'm not sure whether you're saying that genetic mutation cannot cause species to diverge. If you are not suggesting that, I apologize for the misunderstanding.

The theory of evolution unequivocally states that genetic mutation can cause speciation. It is discussed at length here.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[EnderWiggnz]

except of course that ATM's dont reproduce and selectively pass on traits, jackass.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[EllisDees]

>There's nothing to stop them from becoming ATM machines either, given enough time. That's why it's such a rediculous argument.

*sigh*

You admit that microevolution takes place over short periods of time, so what's to stop macroevolution from occuring over long periods of time? We plainly observe the fact that species change over time. If you think there is some limit on the amount they can change, please explain why.

As an aside, do you believe that genetic paternity tresting is valid? If so, how do you feel about the same test showing that you are related to the monkey in the zoo down the street?

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[junkgrep]

---This states that a species will get stronger, but it cannot explain how a species would turn into another species, such as a lizard into a bird.---

Boop boop! Red flag!
"Species" is not a hard and fast category: there is no line, nothing stopping small changes from adding up to big ones. Lizards never "turn into" birds: there is instead a long long chain of intermediate creatures.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[AyeRoxor!]

"except of course that ATM's dont reproduce and selectively pass on traits, jackass."

you think I was kidding? People say the entire universe came from nothing when the nothing, whose origins they cant explain, exploded.

So why, given enough time, can something not produce an ATM machine?

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[AyeRoxor!]

"As an aside, do you believe that genetic paternity tresting is valid? If so, how do you feel about the same test showing that you are related to the monkey in the zoo down the street?"

We all have the same father.

Some just find they can live life easier ignoring Him.

On topic, not a troll, not overrated.
I'm really tired of being modded down because I may have a minority opinion. Is that what slashdot stands for?

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[EnderWiggnz]

we're discussing science, and not mythology.

hey, why dont you just join the flat earth society, their positions are as rasonable and as well founded as yours.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[Anonymous Coward]

you dont get it -

creationism is bullshit and will be modded down as such

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[AyeRoxor!]

"we're discussing science, and not mythology.

hey, why dont you just join the flat earth society, their positions are as rasonable and as well founded as yours."

Wow, some geek on slashdot slamming someone of faith. You're so original. You act as though what I say threatens you, with this defensive response. You are allowed to believe what you believe, but I am not, apparently. What a sad individual.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[Thag]

*sigh*

Oh, grow up.

You admit that microevolution takes place over short periods of time, so what's to stop macroevolution from occuring over long periods of time? We plainly observe the fact that species change over time. If you think there is some limit on the amount they can change, please explain why.

Because he is arguing, correctly IMHO, that these are two completely different phenomemons: the inheriting of certain genetic traits from one generation to the nest, and the evolving of a new species from an existing one. Breeding dogs, you can change the breed, but it's still a dog. You can't breed dogs into sheep, or even wolves.

Thus, calling one "microevolution" and the other "macroevolution" and implying they are the same phenomenon is simply cheating, a cheap parlor trick.

As an aside, do you believe that genetic paternity tresting is valid? If so, how do you feel about the same test showing that you are related to the monkey in the zoo down the street?

If the test says that monkey is my kid, then yes, I'd say it's invalid. And, genetically, I'm as close to some plants as I am to that monkey. Some call the similarity of DNA signs of evolution. Some call it the fingerprints of their Creator. Scientifically speaking, neither side is anywhere close to being able to offer conclusive proof, and sadly, both sides are guilty of intellectual dishonesty.

Me? I'm really vaguely Creationist, as in I believe in God, but have no idea how species come to be. And I don't think anyone else knows, either. The Bible doesn't say, and we don't have nearly enough evidence for a scientific verdict.

Jon Acheson

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[EnderWiggnz]

i pity those who must rely on mythology in order to feel safe.

does it make you feel superior to me knowing that you're "saved"?

opiate of the masses. maybe you will one day understand that marx was 100% on target when he said that.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[Yunzil]

But they're all still canines.

Gotta love this logic.

Premise: Humans and elephants are still vertebrates.
Conclusion: Therefore, evolution is impossible.

This states that a species will get stronger,

No. It says that species will change. That this happens is patently obvious.

but it cannot explain how a species would turn into another species, such as a lizard into a bird.

We have seen speciation happen in the wild and in the lab.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[Yunzil]

Because he is arguing, correctly IMHO, that these are two completely different phenomemons:

No, he isn't. There is no 'micro' and 'macro' evolution. There is only evolution, which just means that the populations of living things change over time.

Oh, and we have seen speciation happen.

And as for breeding wolves from dogs; where do you think the dogs came from in the first place?

And, genetically, I'm as close to some plants as I am to that monkey.

Got a citation for that?

Scientifically speaking, neither side is anywhere close to being able to offer conclusive proof,

But at least one side has evidence.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[karmawarrior]

Because he is arguing, correctly IMHO, that these are two completely different phenomemons: the inheriting of certain genetic traits from one generation to the nest, and the evolving of a new species from an existing one. Breeding dogs, you can change the breed, but it's still a dog. You can't breed dogs into sheep, or even wolves.

I think this is a misinterpretation of the argument. Indeed, if I wanted to be specious, I'd say the argument has mutated into something unrelated to the facts behind evolution.

No, a dog can't become a sheep. And a gorilla can't become an orangutang. The two are entirely different apes. However, an ape with the right attributes can "become" both, and this is what evolutionists are arguing. The two share a common parent ape, somewhere along the line, whose offspring evolved in different ways.

I find the whole "I can't turn water into wine, therefore evolution is false" argument a little disingenious. It's reasonable to suppose that, beyond "unevolving" - obtaining traits of grandparents, it's hard for two different species to evolve into each other. There's a tree structure here, an environment in which the genes are being successively altered to create workable in-betweens; those alterations are usually slight, and harmless, and not real improvements, but over time, more mutatations that are dramatic in nature are collected.

We harness the system to some extent when breeding animals, but we rarely touch more than simple colour/size/strength attributes, we rarely if ever breed to create other species, and it's doubtful we'd have the time to do this if we wanted to. This doesn't make breeding some non-facet of evolution. Nor does the fact that you can't evolve a dog into a sheep.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[EllisDees]

>Because he is arguing, correctly IMHO, that these are two completely different phenomemons: the inheriting of certain genetic traits from one generation to the nest, and the evolving of a new species from an existing one.

They are not fundamentally different things. Through mutation, you can acquire traits that your parents (and siblings) don't possess. If enough of these traits accumulate, your offspring will be different enough from your sibling's offspring that you are two different species. There is nothing magical going on here.

>Breeding dogs, you can change the breed, but it's still a dog. You can't breed dogs into sheep, or even wolves.

All dogs are wolves. And yes, if you isolate a lineage of dogs for long enough, they would no longer be able to successfully interbreed with 'normal' dogs. Genetic incompatibilities would make it impossible.

>Thus, calling one "microevolution" and the other "macroevolution" and implying they are the same phenomenon is simply cheating, a cheap parlor trick.

Both labels describe the exact same thing over different timescales.

>If the test says that monkey is my kid, then yes, I'd say it's invalid. And, genetically, I'm as close to some plants as I am to that monkey.

No, you aren't. Download a few gene sequences from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ and find me even one plant that is more similar to a human than a monkey.

>Some call the similarity of DNA signs of evolution. Some call it the fingerprints of their Creator.

If the creator could have made us any way he liked, why make it appear that we are closely related to some species (that just happen to share a great many morphological characteristics) than others?

>Scientifically speaking, neither side is anywhere close to being able to offer conclusive proof, and sadly, both sides are guilty of intellectual dishonesty.

Science doesn't deal in conclusive proof, only evidence. Evolution has so much evidence in its favor that ignoring it is willful ignorance.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[AyeRoxor!]

"i pity those who must rely on mythology in order to feel safe."

likewise, I pity those who must think they are related to animals to further the desire to believe that they are just animals and hence can do whatever they wish.

does it make you feel superior to me to believe that you know the entire mystery of the universe, namely that there is none?

"opiate of the masses. maybe you will one day understand that marx was 100% on target when he said that."

that's funny. one day you'll understand that these days, even Marx knows he was wrong.

All atheists eventually believe in God. ;-)

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[susano_otter]

The role of (organized) religion in society has little or nothing to do with the validity of faith-based belief systems.

"Since television is also an opiate of the masses, anyone who claims to enjoy a particular television program must be a fool and a dupe."

Sounds good to me, but you'll probably want to defend your Discovery/History Channel documentaries right about now. Hell, you'll probably want to defend the Simpsons, Futurama, and Monty Python, too.

Does it make you feel superior to know that you don't subscribe to a "mythology"? Do you have any empirical evidence that your sense of superiority is somehow truer or more justified than the Xtian sense of superiority?

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[EnderWiggnz]

heh... i dont watch tv... at all...

i do have a problem with Xian fundies though. THey have fundamentally corrupted the teachings of jesus and are damn scary.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[EnderWiggnz]

marx wasnt an atheist you uneducated fool.

let me expand on the quote

(Organized) religion is the opiate of the masses - by promising the underclass that ther suffering will be rewarded in the next life, the populace is placated into trudging through life uncomplaining as a beast of burden, feeling no pain for they know they will be rewarded.

of course, you havent really studied marx, have you?

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[susano_otter]

Sorry, you've lost me. Are you saying that you believe in Jesus, and you just disagree with the Xtian fundamentalist teachings?

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[mofolotopo]

The FACT that relationships between species are not determined in the way you said, and have not been for decades. The discipline is referred to as molecular phylogeny, and is based on sound statistical principles and an insane amount of discrete math.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[SIGFPE]

(1) What Lamarck suggested is not Evolution in the sense it has today and
(2) Here are lots of examples of pre-Lamarckian evolutionary theories.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[mofolotopo]

That's a very interesting idea, and one that has been suggested by people who study memetic evolution. I think it's probably a pretty accurate statement, but all of that meme stuff is new and as yet fairly nebulous, imho.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[mofolotopo]

I'd say sorta yes and sorta no on that interpretation, myself. Our ideas and culture could certainly be Lamarckian, but as yet our biological evolution is still strictly Darwinian. Once our ideas start altering our actual genotype (probably very very soon), maybe we really WILL see Lamarckian biological evolution.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[Anonymous Coward]

"you uneducated fool"

blah blah blah. Are you 80?
You know nothing of my education, old-timer :)
Lets just say I'm in the 90s percentile-wise in everything they test. But other than that, you're dead right and I feel sooo bad.

What a retard.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[blue trane]

I see us heading towards a future where biology provides us with a "blank slate" upon which we can imprint whatever memes we want. Already we have the ability to overcome biological heritage through education...this will become easier. Or not...

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[Anonymous Coward]

>> So why, given enough time, can something not produce an ATM machine?

Something did... humans. After evolution produced us.

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Gotta love Booth babes! [kurtspace.com]

Heh heh... I always love it when hypocrites reveal their true stripes. What was it that Jesus said about looking upon a woman with lust in your heart? Or are you going to claim that you merely admire their clothes?

Re:Of course it didn't come first

[lmenke]

Mr. Wiggnz, I have read several of your comments and responded to some. Is there any rhyme or reason to your disjoint remarks? Or are you a writer of sorts who is trying to be profound? One thing that you have clearly illustrated is that you know nothing of the subject of evolution and probably science in general. Lorenz H. Menke, Jr.

Basically,

[Anonymous Coward]

the theory of evolution has evolved. A lovely tautology for those interested in defending it against creationism, I guess.

Holy poo!

[mofolotopo]

I just started my fall semester, and this guy is my history and philosophy of science teacher! Neat. He's funny as hell in person, by the way. If you ever get a chance to see him lecture, take it!

Re:Holy poo!

[Anonymous Coward]

In this book he looks at how evolutionary thought developed between 1830 and 1875.

It didn't develop. It evolved.

Re:Holy poo!

[Hoser McMoose]

YOu think that's funny, I think I lived in the guy's house last year!

I guess he now lives/teaches down in the states somewhere, but still own a house in Canada where he lives, and during the school year he rents it outto students such as myself!

Great prof he may be, but not a very great landlord! :>

Re:Holy poo!

[Hoser McMoose]

I gotta learn to edit my posts a bit more carefully.. The above should read "still owns a house in Canada where he lives during the summer".

Hmm.. now I gotta wait for two minutes before /. will accept my post...

What the hell?

[AyeRoxor!]

Didn't slashdot just post an evolution book review less than a week ago? How is this pertaining to slashdot? I suppose I should be waiting for the third book this wednesday.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAT?

How is that overrated, you stupid fuck moderators? God, this place is filled with fucking moron moderators. Sad sad sad...

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAT?

HOW the FUCK is A POST whose SUBJECT is THIS STORY OFFTOPIC?

GOD DAMN you STUPID FUCKING MODERATORS are on SOME SHINY NEW KIND OF CRACK!!!!!!!!

Is school out today? That's the only reason I can think that so many 10-year-olds are out moderating.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally I would agree with you about slashdot moderation. In this instance, however, the parent post was crap, and deserves to be down-modded.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are one of the people that believe that a story should be modded down if you don't like it, regardless of the rules for moderation.

That means you're one of the people that makes the moderation suck, so it's funny you said you would agree.

I love Slashdot

[PhysicsGenius]

I really do. It has great stories on Technology (as well as Windows, haha) and Science. But occasionally Slashdot goes awry, such as when they post crackpottery such as that life ring or anti-gravity claims. When they do this, I literally weep with frustration over the young minds being led astray.

I think the problem is when programmers or even science/engineering types with no knowledge of the field the article is referencing try to sound knowledgeable. I wish we could have some way of identifying people who were informed on topics that most of you have no clue about.

Such is the case today. Evolution? Are you still going on about that? Nobody seriously believes that stuff anymore, it went out with phrenology. Haven't you noticed that the main recent proponent of evolution, Richard Dawkins, hasn't even published a book in decades? The future is in intelligent design, baby.

Re:I love Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

The future is in intelligent design, baby.

You only say that because it's the only theory that isn't full of holes.

Evolution hasn't been proven in any lab, like physics or astronomy, but it has logical underpinnings that can't be brushed away with a simple "God did it".

Complicated things come from simpler things, that's why an environment in equilibrium generally degrades into a chaotic state. That's why it's possible for simple atoms to bond into molecules and for molecules to bond into acids and acids to bond into proteins, and so on until you reach the world we live in today.

It starts with Physics, it's a wonder you don't know more.

Re:I love Slashdot

[mofolotopo]

"Evolution hasn't been proven in any lab, like physics or astronomy"

While I appreciate the general thrust of your statements, that part isn't true. Evolution by natural selection has been proven in the lab many many times. It's why bacteria and other nasties develop resistance to drugs, and crop pests develop resistance to herbicides and insecticides. There was even a guy who tracked the genotypes of his intestinal fauna via poo samples every day for a year to study how his changing diet etc. affected the balance of genes in the population. That in itself is a measure of natural selection. The idea that selection is too slow to be observed hasn't been prevalent in biology in a decade or more, but it still persists in popular perception. That's really not all that surprising, though, I'm sure if you watch this thread you'll see arguments that were refuted a century and a half ago!

Re:I love Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite true. Natural Selection has been demonstrated in labs. But the other half of evolution, the increasing of information in DNA via random mutation, hasn't been demonstrated (yet).

Re:I love Slashdot

[blue trane]

I wish we could have some way of identifying people who were informed on topics that most of you have no clue about.

The way is to read the response. Requiring information about who said something before judging it is an example of an ad hominem argument.

Re:I love Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite true. Natural selection has been repeatedly demonstrated in the lab. But the other half of the theory, the inreasing of information in DNA via random mutations, has not been demonstrated in the lab.

For the record, I am of the opinion that random mutations will, over time, reduce information in DNA.

Re:I love Slashdot

[junkgrep]

Nonsense. What we've found is that the rate of mutation is many order MORE than it needs to be, and that natural selection, if anything, actually seems to slow it DOWN.

Re:I love Slashdot

[Yunzil]

The future is in intelligent design, baby.

Intelligent design, eh?

Why didn't the designer make my jaw big enough to hold all my teeth including my wisdom teeth?

Why did the designer make it possible for me to choke on a piece of food?

Why are human eyes so much crappier compared to, for example, a squid's?

Why is our reproductive system such a kludge?

Why do we have a useless add-on to our digestive system (the appendix), which in some people ruptures and kills them?

I guess the designer is an idiot. :)

Re:I love Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

But no expermental correlation between mutations and an increase in genetic information has been made. Regardless of how fast mutations occur you still need to show that they increase information in the DNA.

BTW, if you do show such a correlation, reconition of your greatness would span the aeons...

Until then, Darwin's theory remains incomplete.

Re:I love Slashdot

[junkgrep]

I think you're a bit confused, if that's what you were really talking about. This is a rather ancient creationist claim, and indeed a rather silly one. An increase in variation is itself an increase in "information" content if one means unique sequences. But increasing "information" in terms of information theory is the result of selection: not of mutation itself.

Here you go

Re:I love Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not confused (well, strictly speaking, I don't think I'm confused ;-). I'm not claiming that creationism is true. And finally, I'm not claiming that evolution is false.

I am claiming that we do not have experimental evidence that random mutations actually increase the information (complexity, variety, I'm not picky as to which word you put in there) found in a strand of DNA. Evolution could be true, creationism could be false, and I could be confused but let's keep those claims appart from the one I am making.

I read the link you provided and found it interesting but not a direct rebutal of my point. Section 1.2.2 (in the refutation half) talks about the occurance of mutations in genes when they are copied. It also mentions similarities among protein families. Absent is any mention of _experimental_ evidence linking transcribing errors (or any other mutations) with the creation of protein families from primordial proteins (or any other new information).

Again, if you could provide that experimental evidence, at least I would be amazed at your genius.

Re:I love Slashdot

[mofolotopo]

You're going to have to define information in a reasonable way before that can even be answered. Do you mean beneficial mutations? Those are commonplace. Do you mean just the creation of a different protein from the one originally coded for? Also commonplace. Do you mean mutations that just cause the increase in number of genes (information for sure) in the genome? Also commonplace, and usually fairly nasty. What exactly do you want to see experimental evidence for?

Since all proteins used in a living organism are coded for in their DNA (with the exception that embryos start out with a nice lunchbox packed by mom...which was also produced by transcribing DNA, and those acquired by taking them in from the environment...once again, coded for in somebody else's DNA), the only essential differences between proteins as far as mutations are concerned are the information used to code for them. Why would you think that the mutations to code for any particular protein or set of proteins couldn't occur?

The root of the question as far as I can see it is that you're claiming that certain types of information are "special" in some way that makes it hard for mutation to strike upon them. What evidence do you have for that? If you don't have any sort of evidence that the mechanism that creates new types of proteins out of old ones ISN'T capable of creating the proteins you have in mind, it's not parsimonious to assume that it can't.

Re:I love Slashdot

[junkgrep]

I think the other poster answered your concerns fairly well, and I still think you're confused. The idea that transcription errors (which are only one means by which new genomes come to being) need to create information is sort of beside the point. I suppose they could, but that's simply not what evolution is talking about. "Information," insofar as we are talking about information theory, only really enters into the picture when selection pulls out certain slice of psuedo-random variation. Only then is some sort of filter (what's needed for information) applied.

Re:I love Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do men have nipples?

Re:I love Slashdot

[mr100percent]

Sure, things don't look perfect, but there are some good reasons to this one.

1. I believe there is a reason for things like that. You could call it fate or destiny, but people are made with less than perfect eyesight to change how things happen. If we all could see better, less people would bump into things and get into car accidents. All those lead up to new events, and steer the world on its course. Personally I believe something, like God, made that all happen.

2. Things like appendixes may seem bad, but I get the feeling they're good in the long run. First, think of how it used to thin out the population, then later boosted money for medical research, and killed some bad people. What if there was a guy who would be the next Hitler, but died from appendicitis a month earlier? Let me give you a better example. The Titanic sank, killing nearly 2000. Since then, every ship has lifeboats and safety drills. Who knows how many lives were saved from those precautions, so the Titanic may have been a good thing.

3. Off the top of your head, it does look like the body could use improvements. I really don't think I could do a better job, could you? Think you could engineer a better kneecap? This isn't like the movie Bicentennial Man, we may never make artificial organs that can do better than the real thing, even if we altered DNA and grew cellular designs.

Fuck lucifer

[Anonymous Coward]

Please /. this asshole.
Open irc.mircx.com
then type /msg lucifer Fuck off and die
Type this repeatedly as fast as possible. Please kill this anus humper.

Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Where are all of the transitional fossils?

2) How can you explain the presence of young comets in a solar system that is supposed to be "billions" of years old? (Of course, if the SS is only a few thousand years old, comets are easy to explain.)

3) What caused the Big Bang? What happened in the first 10E-38th of a second after the Big Bang happened?

4) How do you explain the relative thinness of the layer of dust on the Moon? It should be much deeper if the Moon is billions of years old.

5) How do you reconcile the perfection of Scripture with the hoaxes and embarrassments of science (i.e., Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Lucy, etc.)

6) How do you counter the charge that modern Information Theory (IT) renders evolution all but impossible?

Heh, ask these questions, and you'll get uncomfortable feet-shuffling and red faces. Be prepared to be called a "zealot."

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[StrawberryFrog]

1) Um, not all creatures leave fossils. Absence of evidence is not proof of evidence.

2,3,4,5) Nothing to do with Evolution of life on Earth.

6) Perfection of scripture: hahahaha. No, *which* scripture??
Bhudist, Shinto, Hindu, Judaic or Moslem scripture?
Hoaxes: So how does that dispove anything except the hoax concerned?

6) Like this: You have a *very* long row to hoe here, and you could start with a proof not a charge, and start that be describing just what you think this 'modern Information Theory (IT)' is in your opinion. I've certainly never heared of it.

My face is not red, my feet aint shuffling, but you, old buddy, are a trolling, know-nothing zealot.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[pubjames]

Is there actually any point in my addressing any of your questions? Is there any point in someone who believes in evolution discussing it with a Creationist at all?

You have blind faith. You can answer any question with "God did it!" You don't have to give any other reason. The rest of us however need to think about our beliefs, and we can't just fall back on blind faith.

Or actually, may be that's the best response. May be you could understand that. So here's my response to your questions:

I don't have to answer your questions because I have blind faith that evolution is true. I don't need any proof and I don't need to explain things, just my blind faith that it is true. ;-)

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[El Neepo]

well I can answer number 5.

The Bible is far from perfect. Assuming God told someone what to write, the information was filtered through an imperfect human who, most likely, per their own nice little spin on things. Also, do you honestly believe God would sit down Moses and tell him the entire process of which the Universe was created?

Well I personally I don't believe the estimated age of Everything (tm) is as long as people say, but even a shorter amount of time allows for evolution and since most of your argument depends on shorter time, well, all your questions have been answered.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[hyacinthus]

3) What caused the Big Bang? What happened in the first 10E-38th of a second after the Big Bang happened?

I'd just like to point out the obvious, that the theory of Darwinian evolution, and the science of biology in general, have about as much to say about the Big Bang as they do about whether it will rain in Seattle on Labor Day. Biology asks the question, "OK, there's life on this planet, so how does it work?" How the planet got there in the first place is not a question relevant to biology.

6) How do you counter the charge that modern Information Theory (IT) renders evolution all but impossible?

When did you stop beating your wife?

hyacinthus.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[Gleng]

- 1) Where are all of the transitional fossils?

In rocks that haven't been found yet. Lack of evidence of one thing is not proof of another.

- 2) How can you explain the presence of young comets in a solar system that is supposed to be "billions" of years old? (Of course, if the SS is only a few thousand years old, comets are easy to explain.)

Do you actually know how comets are formed?

- 3) What caused the Big Bang? What happened in the first 10E-38th of a second after the Big Bang happened?

I don't know. Do you? Once again, lack of evidence of one thing is not proof of another.

- 4) How do you explain the relative thinness of the layer of dust on the Moon? It should be much deeper if the Moon is billions of years old.

Should it? Why?

- 5) How do you reconcile the perfection of Scripture with the hoaxes and embarrassments of science (i.e., Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Lucy, etc.)

How can you possibly compare the blind and unfounded faith of religion with the achievements of science? Prayer didn't magic that computer you're using out of thin air, you know.

- 6) How do you counter the charge that modern Information Theory (IT) renders evolution all but impossible?

The small amount I've read on Information Theory seems to be extremely naive and, for the most part, incorrect.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[spanky555]

What a clueless ass you are.

Obviously, your mind is made up, so why even throw out these red herrings and strawmen?

Anyway, to your "points":

1. No one is looking for "all" of the transitional fossils, but many have been found.

2-6. Totally irrelevant to evolution, really. You are mixing up your theories, but that's no surprise given your obvious fundamentalist leanings.

Lastly, evolution is fact. We have witnessed radical changes in our recorded history, and in labs. There is no doubt of the fact of evolution in any but a few American fundamentalist mules like yourself. The only point being argued by educated people is the finer points of the process of evolution.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

These are fairly common creationist arguments. Creationists sometimes think they can define what an "evolutionist" believes so they can come up with clever postulates to "disprove" evolution. Evolution is a science, and you can't define what an entire community of scientists believe simply to support you disbelief. Science is a process, not a religion.

And if you truly want answers to your qeustions, glance through any current issues of actual scientific journals from the past decade. I would suggest the last year or so of Scientific American as a good start.

As for the charge that there aren't any transitional fossils, check out the digs from China in the past couple of years. The young commets argument seems a little far fetched as I don't think we don't have any "commet material" to test for age do we? The Big Bang? Well since theoretical high energy physics is another science that is full of competing theories, all of which would be impossible to prove at the present, I don't think that's a valid argument. The dust on the moon argument has been around since the 60's, and its the classic, "Evolutionists say this, but that proves they are wrong" argument that I've heard many creationists use. As far as Piltdown Man as proof for creationism, I don't buy that one either. And I have to say this is the first time I've ever seen someone use IT to say that evolution is impossible, that one made me laugh.

I don't think I'm a zealot anymore than any other practitioner of the scientific method. I would ask that you please try to practice a little tolerance for people who do not think like you and for ideas that you do not agree with just as the rest of us must do when interacting with you.

Thanks.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[warrior_on_the_edge_]

6) How do you counter the charge that modern Information Theory (IT) renders evolution all but impossible?

Simple...
Modern Information Theory is full of bugs........

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[Art_XIV]

1) Satan forgot to place transitional fossils in ground while he placing other fossils in the ground to confound us and lead us away from Jehovah.

2) Hmm... How do you explain the presence of the three-week-old bottle of milk in my refrigerator in a solar system that is supposed to be "billions" of years old?

3) The Demiurge was eating Pop Rocks and drinking Coke at the same time, in spite of God's warnings.

4) Angels or Aliens with vacuum cleaners? The fact that the solar system is moving through a galaxy with varying debris densities? Dang! That's a tired out argument, already!!! (See this for more info.

5) How do you reconcile the hoaxes and embarrassments of religion (i.e. Inquisitions, Jihads, Caste systems, Sabbatai Svi, Heaven's Gate, ad nausem) to the perfection (well... maybe not) of Mathematics?

6) Huh?

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[stevet96]

I prefer blind faith over the blind leading the blind.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[Edrick]

1) There are many transitional fossils, from reptiles to birds, from primates to humans, and from canines to whales. Some are missing, but the fossil evidence available currently, coupled with DNA evidence extracted from bones is more than suitible to prove evolution alone. 2) The universe isn't done evolving, comets can be created today as easily as they were billions of years ago, though it is less frequent now. Incidentally this is irrelevant to evolution. 3) This is also irrelevant to evolution. 4) Again, irrelevant...and not worth an astronomical debate. 5) (also irrelevant, but what the hay) That is nice of you to point out! Science corrects itself when mistakes are made! theories that are fact will weather the test of time, and the idea of evolution has existed since ancient Greece! Your perfect and holy scriptures remain unchanged as you scramble to reconcile the facts with your beliefs. Of course there were changes made, such as King James altering the bible to allow for his diovorce (not to mention millions of translation errors), as well as other changes I am sure were not inspired by divinity. 6) Modern IT theory renders Evolution impossible? That's news to me! I'd love for you to show me some facts from these theories that aren't misinformation or naive in judgement!

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[tgibbs]

These are old objections, that have been answered many times. See, for example, the TalkOrigins Faq

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[UpLateDrinkingCoffee]

Although I know you were trying to make a point, this unfortunately comes close to the attitude of many people on both sides. Science with all of it's claims of unbiased interpretation of the facts completely shuts down when it comes to the possible existence of a creator. Isn't it possible there are facts waiting to be found that prove the existence of a creator? Why are proponents of evoltuion so closed-minded to this possibility? This is the same attitude hated in literal creationism, refusing to accept *any* evidence of evolution. Without being open to the most remote possibilities, science is just dogma and becomes a religion in and of itself.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[jav1231]

Both Evolution and Creationism are systems of faith. The word "faith" has been distorted in our language. What it meant in the original text of biblical times, and in other cultures, is simply belief based on discernment. It can be as equally based on evidence as science. Infact, strictly speaking it should be. Anyone who has "blind faith" is neither being true to Christianity, science, nor himself. We would have no respect for a scientist who has blind faith and we shouldn't respect any religious person with it either. It is saying "I have no evidence, I just think it's true." There is alot of evidence to support Creationism, and a good portion of it is scientific. There is also evidence to support Evolution, either on a macro or micro scale. The evidence must be examined and decisions to believe one or the other or some form of both lie in the hands of the reader, or researcher. Being a Creationist doesn't negate being scientific, but having blind faith does. Whatever you believe, believe it because in your determination the preponderance of the evidence supports it. That, is your faith. >

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[yar]

1. Transitional fossils- and living species- are found all the time. Read Scientific American and Biological Journals. Look online, or for actually authoritative information GO TO THE LIBRARY. Better yet, take a course in evolution at a local university.

2. Er... what scientific principle states that comets were developed at the time of the big bang? The two aren't necessarily related at all. Of course, this argument has nothing to do with evolution and has to do with the big bang.

3. See the end of the last section. I don't know what happened 10E-38th second after the Big Bang. What is the point of that question?

4. This argument was debunked a long time ago, and most creationists who've done a fair amount of research won't touch it. Again, go to the library and do some research. A quick google search pulls up:
http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/moondust .html

5. This isn't an argument at all. Given that one is unable to accept the premise the "perfection of scripture" in a logical discussion, any conclusion drawn is invalid. Even if one were to accept this argument, how does one explain the "hoaxes and embarrasements" of scripture? Why don't various religions and denominations exclude and include certain texts? Why would the presence of hoaxes do anything to discredit the whole? And more importantly, how is this related to hoaxes involved in science?

6. There are several responses here, but before any of them make sense we'd need more information. What modern information theory are you referring to? I have a degree in the biological sciences and a degree in information studies, and I have no idea how the two subjects are interconnected. Could you elaborate?

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[pubjames]

Isn't it possible there are facts waiting to be found that prove the existence of a creator?

I guess you could say it is possible. And I expect if something was unearthed that proved the existance of a God, then you'd find a lot of people start to believe, even scientists. But the fact of the matter is that no such proof exists, nor is there ever likely to be such proof.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[RatBastard]

1. Well, there's all those homonid bones we found. Do none of those fit your bill as a transitional form? Or are you looking for some chimaric nightmare with the head of a man stuck on the body of a chimpanzee? Sorry, but evolution doesn't work that way. The closest you will find is Archiopteryx (sp?), the part bird, part reptile fossile.
   And more to the point is the fact that the fossile record is very incomplete. It takes a very narrow set of circumstances for a skeleton to get fossilized: it must be burried in sand or mud soon after death, or the scavangers will have scattered it; it must remain burried for a very ling time; it must not be destroyed by gelogic forces. How often does that happen. Consider that thr most abundant fossils are those of the trilobites. Trilobites lived for 250,000,000 years and were a very wide-spread group whio lived in shallow seas (the perfect place to be fossilized, BTW). How many T. Rex's have we found? 18? They walked North America for 3-5 million years.
2. Most comets spend the majority of their lives out in the Oort cloud, beyond the orbit of Pluto. New comets are constantly being knocked out of the Oort cloud to rain down upon the inner solar system. And we don't know for certain that the mechanism for creating new comets has stopped in the solar system. Are you seriously saying that nothing new has been created since the formation of the solar system?
3. The Big Bang has nothing to do with Evolution. How about you answer me this: Can God make a rock so big even He can't lift it?
4. Moon dust. Good straw man. What you forget is that the dust will pack down over time under the gravity of the moon. And that metero impacts will smash the dust into rock. Not to mention the fact that the moon has shown several periods of volcanic activity (cause by metero impacts).
5. Hoaxes? You mean like those rocks with dinosaur and human footprints side by side that the "Christian scientists" (not "The Curtch of Christ, Scientist") won't let secular sciientists see? Hoaxes are man-made.
   Piltdown Man worked because "he" presented the exact chimeric niightmare you seem to demand as a transitional form - half man, half ape.
   As for Scriptual perfection, I'll leave the debunking of that to someone who knows Scripture better than I do.
6. Information Theory doesn't do squat about evolution. The misunderstanding of it seems to bring great joy to detractors of evolution. The assumption that a being must have the genetic information of every species it may give rise to within itself before speciation can occure is laughable. Through the process of corrupted information transferrance (we like to call it "mutation"), new information is constantly being addded to the Gene Pool. Life is not static.

I find it odd that you would be so smug and pompus and yet hide behind the skirts of Anonymous Coward. I'd think that if you really believed iin what you are saying that you'd at least have the guts to put a name on your work.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[stevet96]

Is there any point in a Creationist arguing with a Darwinian? If you don't have an answer you just say things like, "The absence of something does not prove it doesn't exist". Well how can you believe that something existed without andy proof. That too me sounds like TRUE BLIND faith, or lack thereof. How lame of an excuse is that?

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[stevet96]

" Lack of evidence of one thing is not proof of another."

Exactly right. Can you disprove that there is a God? Can you disprove Creationism?

Thought Not!

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

There is a difference between the "faith" one has in science, and a religious "faith". I believe that I will not fall through the floor when I walk on it; I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. This is far different than a religious belief.

-asb

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[opencode]

Darwin was peculiarly skeptical of the "reliability" of fossification records. And bear in mind that his three books prior to Origin_of_Species were geological treastises ...

That said, I certainly appreciate the dialogue here on slashdot on this topic, from both sides: I typically don't see Christians well-versed in the literature ...

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[jmccay]

I have a book you should read. It is Genesis and the Big Bang by Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D. Dr. Schroeder is an applied physicist and an applied theologian with undergraduate and doctoral degrees from MIT. In the book he explains that in reality the two theories (Genesis and Evolution) are really not at odds with each other. I saw a show with this guy and he impressed me. The book is still on my to read list, but the talk he was giving was basically on the book. Definately worth reading no matter what side of the argument you fall on. I'm thinking about boning up on my physics before reading the book (just the basics).

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[EnderWiggnz]

christians arent even well-versed in the bible.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[UpLateDrinkingCoffee]

But the fact of the matter is that no such proof exists, nor is there ever likely to be such proof That statement shows the bias that I'm talking about. If you have already decided something can't be proven, would you even recognize the proof if you found it?

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[teeth]

I prefer blind faith over the blind leading the blind.

...and they vary, how???

I see no credible evidence for god(s).

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[g00dn3ss]

I mostly agree with you about Science as dogma - but I'm curious as to what this evidence for a creator might look like.

If you think about the world in the movie 'The Matrix' for example, what evidence could one use to prove that the orginal world is a computer simulation. It seems like you would need evidence outside the simulation, no?

Would you look for violations of physical laws? I don't think this would work because we can just modify our thinking on how the physical laws work to explain any observed deviations. When it comes down to it, the basic problem is that there is no reason a creator of the universe needs to violate the laws of his own creation.

My own personal view is that this evidence can only be obtained and interpreted by the individual. As a contrived example, suppose I am walking in a desert (where I can see for miles) and I come across a snake. Just as the snake strikes to bite my leg, a very small meteor falls out of the sky and kills the snake. Now based on the physical laws of the universe, there is nothing that technically prohibits such an event from happening. So from a scientific perspective it is not evidence of a creator. But from an individual perspective, it seems like a pretty wild combination of random events. A naturalist would probably tell themself "as time->infinity anything can happen" while a religious person would see this as further evidence of an intelligence at work in the universe.

Did you have any evidence in mind? If you can think of something, then you could use science to search for that evidence. I just can't think of anything that couldn't be doubted.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[stevet96]

"Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."

Don't worry, the day that you will see credible evidence is coming. No one will be able to deny it.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[Yunzil]

"Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord."

What happens on that day if the Lord turns out to be Odin the All-Father in the Halls of Asgard?

Boy will you feel foolish!

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[Yunzil]

There is alot of evidence to support Creationism, and a good portion of it is scientific.

Such as?

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[UpLateDrinkingCoffee]

What would the evidence look like? I really don't know... say we found a numbering scheme in DNA and each species was sequentially numbered? Maybe we contact humans on another planet that have the ten commandments. Granted this is all completely conjecture on my part and I make no claims that I believe any of it will happen. What if your snake and meteor example happened two, five, or a hundred times in a row?

The real point of my reply was to show that the evolutionist side should look within and evaluate if they are as guilty of "blind faith" as the creationist side is.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Good! I want to see a few miracles. Jesus must have a few wildcards up his sleave because he knows how hard it will be to convince everybody.

Making every single person in the world float 12 inches off the ground would be good to convince people he's not just screwing around. Ressurecting a few famous dead people for all to see would be good. Old ones, too, like Bach. Ressurect some dinosaurs. Yea.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[No One]

Science with all of it's claims of unbiased interpretation of the facts completely shuts down when it comes to the possible existence of a creator.

Scientists doesn't have anything to say one way or the other about a creator. Science doesn't care. The possibility of an intelligent creator is the domain of theology, not the physical sciences, until someone comes up with a way of objectively testing the existence of that creator. Until then, scientific principles don't have anything to say about it one way or the other.

Isn't it possible there are facts waiting to be found that prove the existence of a creator? Why are proponents of evoltuion so closed-minded to this possibility?

It's possible. However, theists have had centuries to come up with that evidence, and have failed to do so. Science is based on facts, not wishes. If objective irrefutable evidence of a creator is brought forward, then science will expand to encompass the fact of the existance of a creator. Until then, it's not closedminded to say that wishful thinking doesn't constitute objective irrefutable evidence.

Science is always open to remote possibilities. However, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, and when a claim is repeated over and over for years without any proof whatsoever, scientists tend to dismiss it in order to concentrate on things that actually have support.

Contrary to the belief of theists who want to pretend they're persecuted, science isn't out to get you. Science doesn't care about you one way or the other, except when you start insisting that mythological concepts be treated and taught as scientific fact.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[StrawberryFrog]

Absence of evidence is not proof of evidence.

Sorry, that should read 'Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'.

Re: Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[Black Parrot]

> 1) Where are all of the transitional fossils?

Nothing could better illustrate the fact that creationism is the "science" of ignorance. Creationists like to argue about missing fossils, but scientists like to try to explain the fossils we have.

Rather than asking about missing fossils, why don't you tell us how Genesis I explains all the fossils we do have.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[stevet96]

He has far more than that planned. Just read Revelations or the Left Behind series. And you people will still not believe, until you see Him face to face.

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[Mryll]

6) Like this: You have a *very* long row to hoe here, and you could start with a proof not a charge, and start that be describing just what you think this 'modern Information Theory (IT)' is in your opinion. I've certainly never heared of it.

I directly can't see the original post, but from replies it seems he's asserting that information/organized structures cannot arise through "random" processes.

Complete and utter BS as far as I'm concerned. With an energy/entropy source, like, say, the sun, involved, meaningful structures can and do arise given seemingly random injection of energy. It happens all of the time. Inevitably. All of the fluid/heat transfer transport laws, describing meaningful structures formed from boundary conditions and energy sources can be derived from statistical (read random) mechanics and irreversible thermodynamics. (Read Prigozhine).

Heat up fluid particles in a broad flat pan. Random energy to random particles from the bottom of the pan. Raileigh (sp) convection will result, with formation of hexagonal cells of fluid motion.

Perturb damn near any "equilibrium" system with random energy/entropy and the result is formation of a meaningful structure. Don't give me that BS...

Re:Questions evolutionists don't want to answer

[Gleng]

"Can you disprove that there is a God? Can you disprove Creationism?"

No. All anyone can do is focus their understanding where the known facts clearly point.

Can you prove there is a God? Can you disprove evolution?

Thought not. :)

Creationism

[pubjames]

This story will no doubt generate some Creationism vs. evolution debates.

I have a question. Do creationists realise that their beliefs are really only a USA phenomenon? I've not seem much evidence of creationism anywhere else in the "first world". Just thought I'd ask because perhaps some American creationists think this is a hot issue all over the world. It's not.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not all that surprising, really.

The question of creationism is essentially a question of morality; it asks a people if they think they are here because of the actions of a loving Creator or if they are a cosmic accident, in which case life (and morality) have no meaning. It should be no surprise that the idea of special creation is not welcomed in post-Christian Europe or in East Asia, where mysticism and New Age-type tomfoolery is encouraged instead of traditional values.

So yes, I would agree that you are right. It is unfortunate that the United States is the only nation left in the world that is willing to take morality seriously. But when you say that creationism is a US-only phenomenon, I say that's something to be proud of, not something to be embarassed about.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen, my friend. And it's usually localized to some areas even there. It's not really a hot issue on the East coast.

I was literally FLOORED (I come from the East coast) when I found out that Kansas banned the teaching of evolution in its schools. I didn't even realize it was even controversial anymore. Where I grew up and the types of people I associated with (educated people) probably had a big influence on my thinking that it was a non-issue in the modern world, and that the controversy ended as far back as the 1950's in America. Boy, was I wrong. Now that I live in Colorado, I know a lot more "fundies" who have the concept of what evolution is and what a scientific theory constitutes all wrong. It's amazing to me. It's not that these people are stupid or uneducated, they are just so sheltered, and whenever the subject comes up, you can almost see their mind snap shut.

Re:Creationism

[alienmole]

Do creationists realise that their beliefs are really only a USA phenomenon?

That's a tough one, since US creationists are only vaguely aware of the existence of a world outside the USA, and what awareness they do have tends to be about which parts of it need to be carpet-bombed to eliminate the infidels (oops, I mean pagans, getting my religious extremism confused there...)

Re:Creationism

[Nomad7674]

Do creationists realise that their beliefs are really only a USA phenomenon? I've not seem much evidence of creationism anywhere else in the "first world".

As someone who considers himself, if not a creationist at least a skeptic about evolution, I was not aware of how Europeans see the issue. Is the difference cultural or philosophical? i.e. Is the lack of a phenomenon reflective of the protestant/evangelical movement in the USA or is it due to some element of philosophy unique to the American mind?

This is something I'd like to hear more about.

Re:Creationism

[Lemmy Caution]

You are correct. The data about the demographics of Bible literalism are pretty discouraging: between 32 and 40 percent of Americas subscribe to a literal reading of the Bible, versus 7 percent of the British. There's other interesting data at that link. What's most striking is that American belief in creationism is around 45 percent for most of the population, but only at 5 percent for scientists.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say Creationism, do you mean Old Earth Creationism or New Earth Creationism? There is a pretty big difference. New Earth Creationism is very fundamental (i.e., the earth was created by God at 9:00 am GMT on October 23, 4004 BCE or something like that). Old Earth Creationism is the view that God created the world, but did this over billions of years rather than literally as described in the first couple of chapters of the Bible. (i.e., don't tell me a lightning bolt hit a puddle of primoridal soup and we got DNA).

Please don't assume all Christians (or all Creationists) are Old Earth Creationists.

Re:Creationism

[akaina]

ya... our bad. I guess we should rely on what the 3rd world countries think for innovative theory. We should challenge ourselves daily to think more inside the box of pre-existing commonly believed ideas. Then we'de have it all figured out, wouldn't you say?

Side note: These days, creationists are fighting for the same rights evolutionsts fought for to get evolution in public schools (scopes monkey trial). Does anyone else notice the pendulum swinging?

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an European and I think that the Europeans are not in general creationists. However, I think that in Central and South America a lot of people are creationists just because evolution is not learned in schools, or is presented as a sin. This is obviously because of the (negative) influence that Catholic Church has in the less developed coutries. But we are surprised that creationism can still be so important in a place like USA, where science and technology are so important.

Re:Creationism

[mikeplokta]

As someone who considers himself, if not a creationist at least a skeptic about evolution, I was not aware of how Europeans see the issue. Is the difference cultural or philosophical? i.e. Is the lack of a phenomenon reflective of the protestant/evangelical movement in the USA or is it due to some element of philosophy unique to the American mind?

It's cultural. Biblical literalism is not a widely held belief in any Western country other than the US. And creationism is a desperate kludge intended to explain the natural world without having to give up biblical literalism -- without the pre-existing belief, it's no more likely that anyone will take creationism seriously than that they'll take phlogiston or epicycles seriously.

Re:Creationism

[budalite]

Creationism will go away when religion goes away. Religion will go away when fear goes away. Fear will go away when selfishness goes away. Selfishness goes away when the pursuit of truth becomes one's only goal. (Well, that and a truly secure wireless network...)

Re:Creationism

[j0hn_paul]

The Catholic Church preaches evolution as fact NOT creationism.

Re:Creationism

[pubjames]

It's cultural. Biblical literalism is not a widely held belief in any Western country other than the US.

I'd agree with this. There are lots of people who believe in God in Europe, but most don't find any conflict between their religious beliefs and science.

Re:Creationism

[pubjames]

The Catholic Church preaches evolution as fact NOT creationism.

Is that true? If it is then it is a fairly recent phenomenon. I remember that a couple of years ago the Pope kind of hinted that Catholics need to have an open mind about evolution, but some people I know who went to Catholic schools were taught that evolution was wrong.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] or if they are a cosmic accident, in which case life [...] have no meaning

Based on my observation, that's the reason why people want to beleive in a god of some sort. They can't stand a reality where life actually has no meaning. I'm still trying to figure out why life must have a meaning.

It is unfortunate that the United States is the only nation left in the world that is willing to take morality seriously.

It is also unfortunate that people are willing to think that morality requires a god. The way I see it, some morality is required to live in cooperation, and humans wouldn't last long without cooperation.

But hey, I don't expect to sway anyone - I've learned that it can't be done.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

And the basis of most of the world's religions is the pursuit of truth, so the circle is closed.

Re:Creationism

[mr. marbles]

Oh please people don't just fear other people. The origin of religion is the cave painting, you think those people were afraid cause other people are selfish? Fear is a part of life, deal with it.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

The Catholic Church preaches different things in different places and moments.

For example, they used to say that God created the world about -5400 years before Christ, but as now nobody would belive this, they say Genesis has only a metaphoric meaning. The same holds for the solar system structure, the virginity of Mary (imposed as a dogma about 1700), the infalibility of the Pope, etc. Just to complete the picture, recall that for instance in 1826 a man was killed by the Spanish Inquisition for being a Deist.

Some Catholic priests admit evolution but only for animals, others not even that; many of them do not even know it. I guess that less than 1% of them has ever read unbiassed information about Darwinism. The evolution theory, in times of Darwin and now, is TOTALLY contrary to the Christian conception of the world. To accept it would be equivalent to admit that they are wrong.

Re:Creationism

[Dale Dunn]

Please also don't assume that Old Earth Creationists don't adhere to the fundamentals of Christianity (are not fundamentalist).

Old Earth Creationists do believe that they are following a literal reading of the Bible, if you read it in Hebrew. That the English translation uses the English word "day" is an artifact of the translation. At the time most English translations were made, reasons to use other meanings of the Hebrew word used were not largely present. The question of whether those Hebrew words as used in Genesis mean a calendar day or a long period of time has been discussed as far back as the early church fathers. That is, within the first few centuries, AD. Or so I'm told. That's several thousand pages to examine, if you want to examine it.

Many English speakers get dogmatic on this point, insisting that the Hebrew used in Genesis can only mean a calendar day. I have heard arguments for both sides, andfind the Old Earth arguments more convinceing, from both a Biblical and scientific viewpoint, independent of one another. I've not yet had the time to examine this myself, but I intend to. I really don't know what speakers of other languages think, or if they have time to care.

Please don't confuse this issue with the ignorant bumper sticker "If it ain't KJV, it ain't Bible".

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

Nono, it's something to be embarrassed about.

Re:Creationism

[laertes]

It's an interesting problem. I believe that, while the Church itself may be coming around (not really on the issue of the origin of humanity,) the Bishops, Priests, and Teachers in the Church have their own ideas. So, really, the whole Catholic opposition to Evolution is a "Grass-roots" kind of thing.

Re:Creationism

[Bingo Foo]

Wow. All this will happen when human nature itself changes improbably in the particular way you desire.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

People just like something to believe in. I think it's an aspect of the human mind grown out of years of first 1) having something to believe in, and 2) a strange belief that displaces us further from the natural order then we really are.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you actually literally hit the floor?

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have any conflict between my religious beliefs and science either. I do however, use judgemnt before I believe anything, Science or Religion. True Science and Religion go hand in hand. After all, God laid down the scientific laws of the universe. There is no conflict between the two. If a conflict arises, then either the individuals religion or view of scientific "fact" is incorrect.

And enough with the flame wars on this subject. None of you are going to be able to convince me that evolution is fact, no matter how many times you insult my intellegence, and I am not going to be able to make you start going to church with me no matter how many times I refute your excuses. So give it a rest.

Re:Creationism

[blamanj]

a fairly recent phenomenon

For certain definitions of recent.

In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), Pius XII had stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation. John Paul II has also reconfirmed this position. As I read it, they allow evolution to describe what happened to the body and make the soul the center of a spiritual creation.

Re:Creationism

[Dale Dunn]

In addition to the negative impact on Christianity. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not against Catholics, just Roman Catholocism).

Neither am I against science. It's great and useful stuff. It is a mistake to assume that science and religion are incompatible. It can even be argued that Science and Christian theology overlap. (A Christian theologian could argue the the study of nature is a subset of Theology, which is the study of God).

What I am against is the advocacy that Biological Evolution is an established fact explaining the origin of life. It is neither of those two things. It is an interpretation of observed facts, and arguably not an observed fact iteslf. I mean to say that the evidences cited for Biological Evolution are debatable, and the theories of the natural origin of life are still very much in flux and being changed on a significant scale to deal with new data. For example, the idea of the primordial soup on Earth is dead, hence all of the focus in the news elsewhere on new ideas of the origin of life (Mars, outer space, other systems). As an explanation of the origin of life, I find it implausible on it's own grounds, apart from what the Bible teaches.

However, within the limits of methodological naturalism, it may be the best explanation. When methodological naturalism fails to supply a convincing answer to the question of life origins, I think it's rational to look elsewhere, and apply scientific methods to supernatural explanations, almost all of which will be mowed down under scientific methods like grass under a mower.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

So, Creationism will go away when we stop being human?

Re:Creationism

[blue trane]

Humans can change their nature. Through logic, willpower, technology (such as genetic engineering)...

Re:Creationism

[Bingo Foo]

Individual humans can work against their nature, and thank God for that. The world would look like a cross between Zimbabwe and a co-ed college dorm during a power outage otherwise.

There will always be a spectrum of compliance with social norms. You, calling upon logic and willpower to change human nature as a whole, will never make it happen. Communism (yes, even when "purely implemented") fails because you will NEVER get a large enough fraction of people to behave that way. The institutionalized atheism of many totalitarian states is in a constant state of struggle against human nature. In structuring civilization, you have to rely on the immutable parts of human nature, as well as the parts that we can make better through individual effort and social pressures.

Re:Creationism

[dillon_rinker]

insisting that the Hebrew used in Genesis can only mean a calendar day.
Might have something to do with the phrase "...and the evenening and the morning were the first day." Given Strong's definitions (below), what other reasonable way is there to interpret it but a calendar day? From Strong's for evening...

06153 `ereb {eh'-reb} from 06150; TWOT - 1689a; n m AV - even 72, evening 47, night 4, mingled 2, people 2, eventide 2, eveningtide + 06256 2, Arabia 1, days 1, even + 0996 1, evening + 03117 1, evening + 06256 1, eventide + 06256 1; 137 1) evening, night, sunset 1a) evening, sunset 1b) night

And from Strong's for morning...

01242 boqer {bo'-ker} from 01239; TWOT - 274c; n m AV - morning 191, morrow 7, day 3, days + 06153 1, early 3; 205 1) morning, break of day 1a) morning 1a1) of end of night 1a2) of coming of daylight 1a3) of coming of sunrise 1a4) of beginning of day 1a5) of bright joy after night of distress (fig.) 1b) morrow, next day, next morning

Re:Creationism

[junkgrep]

The problem with this reading is that the same word is used later in the text to describe actual literal days, without comment or change in context. Not to mention the correlation to the Sabbath cycle. In fact, there's a fairly good arguement that each "day" is counted in the text by the revolution of the sun: which would seem silly if we were talking about "eras." But the main problem is that the OldEarth view is relatively new: none of the rabbinical readers ever seem to read it that way, and this in itself is fairly good evidence that, as long as the rabbinical tradition has any merit and extends back even to the first authroship of genesis, this is the way it what it was written to mean in the first place.

Re:Creationism

[blue trane]

You, calling upon logic and willpower to change human nature as a whole, will never make it happen.

If it's possible for an individual, it's possible for the human race as a whole...I'm not saying it will happen anytime soon, just noting that it is possible to change human nature.

I would argue that each individual would benefit from challenging this so-called human nature. So I will continue to do what I can, trying to point out that just because something is today, doesn't mean it can't be changed.

But since it appears to be human nature to disregard or mock most things I say, I'm not expecting much.

Re:Creationism

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

What I am against is the advocacy that Biological Evolution is an established fact explaining the origin of life


No scientist working in the fields related to biological evolution would advocate that evolution explains the origin of life. Evolution occurs *after* life originated. The field related to the origin of life is called abiogenesis.


and apply scientific methods to supernatural explanations

Since the scientific method relies on naturalism, it cannot be used for investigating supernatural phenonoma.

-asp

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for your gem of wisdom, Yoda

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

What I am against is the advocacy that Biological Evolution is an established fact explaining the origin of life.

*sigh* I don't even know why I even bother.

Repeat after me: Biological evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life.

What it explains is the biodiversity of life on Earth. It does not theorize on where that life came from.

Just because Jerry Falwell and Fred Phelps like to lump astronomy, cosmology, geology, anthropology, chemistry, etc. all under the blasphemous category of "evolution" doesn't mean that you should as well, at least not if you're interested in maintaining a modicum of credibility when participating in scientific debates. If you want to argue about evolution, you should at least have a rudimentary idea about what it actually is.

Re:Creationism

[Lemmy Caution]

Creationism, in terms of the discussion that we really care about, is the belief that if you go up the ancestral tree of humans, you will never reach something that isn't a human. There are those who believe in theistically guided evolution - that's not what we're talking about, we are talking about the origins of the human (and other) species.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

Even taking your arguments at face value, I have to ask - why do you feel that Creationism is the logical alternative?

I mean - perhaps the theory of biological evolution fails to satisfy all the observed evidence. Scientific method would require us to therefore refine the theory. Or if it evidence contradicts the theory, formulate a new theory which does explain all the evidence.

If we choose the literal reading of Genesis as our new theory, it must explain all the same observations just as well as evolution does. For it to be a better theory of the origin of life on this planet, it must do that and explain any observations which apparently contradict evolution.

It must do this without substantive "exceptions to the rule" which seem arbitrary in light of the rule, or other known theories.

For example, some Creationists adhere to the belief that the earth (indeed the universe) is only a few hundred thousand years old.
They explain fossil evidence as a "test of faith" placed there by God.
They explain away distant stars and calculations of their age based on doppler effects by claiming that the speed of light was faster in the past.

This theory (about the age of the universe) requires too many "exceptions to the rule" for it to be a workable model of the laws of the universe.

The thing is - you can never prove that they are wrong. All of these exceptions may actually have occurred. God may indeed play dice with the Universe, on a whim, or part of a grand design.

But as far as these things go, I prefer Occams Razor.

RE: Creationism

[spaceshaker]

I am a creationist and I am proud of it and I most certainly don't hide that fact from anyone.

Just thought you should know.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, life beginning on earth is far from a dead idea; new hypotheses on the exact circumstances are presented every now and then. So far, nobody has been able to reproduce the circumstances, but there are so many possible environments to look at and rare events that may have been associated with it that it is not something we might expect to be able to reproduce any time soon, if ever.

Being skeptical is important when looking at science, and it is true that biological evolution has not been absolutely proved...nor have most scientific theories explaining observations.

Now, if you apply the same critical thinking toward religious explanations; say you believe that life has a divine origin and purpose. What reason can you have to accept the Christian Bible as a belief system, considering that even assuming that the text is divine in origin, it is known to have been modified by mortal men?

The Christian Bible is obviously not literally true, if not for other reasons, all the missing generations since the first humans.

It is also lacking in internal consistency in terms of the most important parts. It clearly ascribes human personality traits to God...but these are entirely different in the Old Testament and the New Testament. As is the theme, and the change in theme makes very little sense for an omnipotent being, and a lot of sense considering human culture.

There is no way to compare the relative merits of different religious beliefs objectively without selecting some criteria. You might look for the one that makes the most sense morally; if you believe that your morals are of divine origin, a religion correlating with your gnostic knowledge. For me, that would mean I'd look for the most forgiving, most understanding, least demanding and least exclusionary.

Alternately, you may have personal supernatural experiences. Mind you, most people who do view their experiences as a confirmation of what they already believe in, while the experiences themselves are generally ambiguous and would be explained in different ways by different religions.

What I consider more or less insane is people willing to accept something someone else tells them is information from a divine source as such, with no personal divine knowledge to confirm it. Or personal knowledge limited to a conviction that God exists, and then accepting what is taught about God by others as truth.

Considering that a vast majority of people believe what they were taught to believe, have values that were taught by their parents and almost without exception, if they subscribe to any religion, it is the one that is most dominant in the culture they grew up...I'd say that in most cases, accepting any specific religion as truth without other reasons demonstrates a serious lack of objectivity.

But I do not deny the possibility that some people may have very good personal reasons for their religious beliefs.

Re:Creationism

[teeth]

"As someone who considers himself, if not a creationist at least a skeptic about evolution, I was not aware of how Europeans see the issue. Is the difference cultural or philosophical?"

Here in Scotland our "national" church is declining towards extinction within 50 years. This is good.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just my $.02 worth.

I'm not attempting to change anyone's mind.
I'm not arguing for, or against Creation.
I'm not arguing for, or against Evolution.
I'm just stating what I have seen and read.

>>>Even taking your arguments at face value, I have to ask - why do you feel that Creationism is the logical alternative?

What do you feel would be a "logical" alternative.

>>>I mean - perhaps the theory of biological evolution fails to satisfy all the observed evidence. Scientific method would require us to therefore refine the theory. Or if it evidence contradicts the theory, formulate a new theory which does explain all the evidence.

A problem many people have with evolution, is that
it is presented as fact, rather than theory. Sure, evolution is fact...micro-evolution. Micro-evolution has been observed and documented,
but macro-evolution (which is the "evolution" most people refer to when using the term "evolution") has never been observed. Also, you cannot take a "bunch" of micro-evolutions and make a macro-evolution; that just does not work.

Evolution? Sure, it happens...all of the time. Macro-evolution, like ape becoming man, etc. does not have any substantial evidence, and in fact there is evidence that makes it much easier to dis-believe, rather than believe in macro-evolution.

>>>If we choose the literal reading of Genesis as our new theory, it must explain all the same observations just as well as evolution does. For it to be a better theory of the origin of life on this planet, it must do that and explain any observations which apparently contradict evolution.

Actually, it wouldn't have to explain. Whether you're a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Budhist, or whatever, the supernatural explanation for something does not have to "fall in line" with natural explanations.

>>>It must do this without substantive "exceptions to the rule" which seem arbitrary in light of the rule, or other known theories.

No, it wouldn't. The supernatural world is not observed by the scientific method. It wouldn't have to be held to the same rules.

>>>For example, some Creationists adhere to the belief that the earth (indeed the universe) is only a few hundred thousand years old.
They explain fossil evidence as a "test of faith" placed there by God.
They explain away distant stars and calculations of their age based on doppler effects by claiming that the speed of light was faster in the past.

I've never heard a creationist say the world/universe if only a few hundred thousand years old. I've heard anywhere between 6-12 thousand years. The 12 thousand year cap is placed because of the magnetic field of the earth.
The decay rate of the field is a constant, and exponential rate. Going back more than 12 thousand years and the force of the field is too strong for molecules to hold together. Most creationists focus on a "young" earth. An earth that is 6-12 thousand years old, created when the universe was very young.

Many evolutionist state that the earth is the collection of cosmic debris (old planets, dust, etc.) coalescing to form a planet. Creationists argue this, stating that the earth was formed in the blink of an eye (actually faster) and at least attempt to backup their statement by citing that certain radioactive elements found inside the earth have half-lives of fractions of a second.

This "test of faith" you speak of when talking about the fossils is also something I have never heard. Creationists have no problem with the fossil record. In fact, the fossil record has proven that dinosaurs lived with man, or man with dinosaurs.

I do find it odd you mention the speed of light slowing down over time, because this has actually been observed, and a report here on Slashdot not long ago was the subject of much debate.

You also fail to mention Einstein. In very rudimentary terms (rudimentary by the way I will describe it, not the way he stated it, he states that the universe expands...during this expansion, time is expanded too, not just space.
Light is affected as well. This expansion could account for the millions of light-years between the plantes, even though the center of the universe may have only been around for 1000 years.
Yes, I picked 1000 years out of my head...it's just a number...plug in any number you want, 1, 10, 100, 5000000. I don't care...it doesn't matter.

>>>This theory (about the age of the universe) requires too many "exceptions to the rule" for it to be a workable model of the laws of the universe.

Actually, from the evidence and arguments I've seen and read about, it requires far few "exceptions" (I have yet to see 1 exception.
Perhaps you can enlighten me. I *honestly* would like to know more).

>>>The thing is - you can never prove that they are wrong. All of these exceptions may actually have occurred. God may indeed play dice with the Universe, on a whim, or part of a grand design.

I agree. We may never know...or maybe mankind will.

>>>But as far as these things go, I prefer Occams Razor.

I prefer listening to music, rather than arguing Ceationism Vs Evolutionism because people don't like to admit they are wrong. If one believes in evolution, most of the time he is automatically biased against Creationism. Likewise, many Creationist disregard all forms of evolution, even though we know micro-evolution does in fact occur. macro-evolution is a different story.

Re:Creationism

[grammar fascist]

First, I ought to say that I go along with the "day as a timespan" crowd.

It should be remembered that the book of Genesis was revealed through Moses to a group of people who were not ready for a higher law. They were also still in a slave mindset, and generally illiterate.

Everything gets simplified in that case. How could you tell a person like that about - for example - how God set all the elements together and oversaw the development of the Earth over the course of billions of years, possibly nudging it every once in a while but knowing what the final outcome would be simply from knowing the beginning of it?

Seven days is a lot easier to digest, especially if you need to teach about the Sabbath at the same time. It's not necessarily incorrect, either. Even if the context does indicate actual days, it wouldn't be the first time that poetic license was taken, or even a simple metaphor was used to convey extra meaning. (A very long time to us = one day to God.) Isaiah did that kind of stuff all the time.

Re:Creationism

[junkgrep]

So, if the "illiterate natives" got it wrong, then what else is wrong? If the literal reading isn't right, then it's simply wrong to claim that the text is "dead-on right" just because it can possibly be read in some alternative way that doesn't happen to contradict scientific findings.

It should be remembered that the book of Genesis was revealed through Moses to a group of people who were not ready for a higher law. They were also still in a slave mindset, and generally illiterate.That's right: calling the Jews, and their entire Scriptural tradition, stupid can get you off the hook!

Re:Creationism

[No One]

What do you feel would be a "logical" alternative.

His point is that disproving evolution by natural selection does not automatically prove Christian young-earth creationism. That would require objective evidence that the Christian creation myth happened, and would require that the Christian creation myth allow scientists to make testable predictions.

Sure, evolution is fact...micro-evolution. Micro-evolution has been observed and documented, but macro-evolution (which is the "evolution" most people refer to when using the term "evolution") has never been observed.

This is false. First, "macro-evolution" can be observed repeatedly throughout the fossil record.

Second, "micro-" and "macro-evolution" are both pseudoscientific weasel words invented by creationists to avoid having to admit that evolution by natural selection as fact. When it became impossible for creationists to deny that changes occur within species, they invented the term "micro-evolution" to describe that, and invented the term "macro-evolution" instead of using the term speciation. Neither term is part of any biological evolution theory.

Actually, it wouldn't have to explain. Whether you're a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Budhist, or whatever, the supernatural explanation for something does not have to "fall in line" with natural explanations.

No, it wouldn't. The supernatural world is not observed by the scientific method. It wouldn't have to be held to the same rules.

Why not? Why does mythology get a get-out-of-jail free card? Why should any intelligent person accept it as fact if it doesn't/isn't?

Many evolutionist state that the earth is the collection of cosmic debris (old planets, dust, etc.) coalescing to form a planet. Creationists argue this, stating that the earth was formed in the blink of an eye (actually faster) and at least attempt to backup their statement by citing that certain radioactive elements found inside the earth have half-lives of fractions of a second.

No. That's what every cosmologist states. Biological evolution has jack shit to do with the formation of the earth.

As for the radiation claim, support please? Never heard that one, so I don't have a link to one of the people who's debunked it.

In fact, the fossil record has proven that dinosaurs lived with man, or man with dinosaurs.

No, it hasn't. Creationists refuse to allow actual scientists to examine that "evidence" of theirs, so it can be safely assumed it's a hoax. Especially since it contradicts every single piece of fossil evidence that has been uncovered, rather than manufactured.

I do find it odd you mention the speed of light slowing down over time, because this has actually been observed, and a report here on Slashdot not long ago was the subject of much debate.

Cite, please? The only discussions I've seen had to do with the speed of light in different materials.

You also fail to mention Einstein. In very rudimentary terms (rudimentary by the way I will describe it, not the way he stated it, he states that the universe expands...during this expansion, time is expanded too, not just space.
Light is affected as well. This expansion could account for the millions of light-years between the plantes, even though the center of the universe may have only been around for 1000 years.
Yes, I picked 1000 years out of my head...it's just a number...plug in any number you want, 1, 10, 100, 5000000. I don't care...it doesn't matter.

By what mechanism? Furthermore, the "expansion" of time is universal. It may have only been 1000 years, or 1000 seconds, or 1000 trillion years to an outside observer, but the universe and the earth have experienced billions of years, not six thousand. In case you've forgotten, distance between stars and planets is not exactly the only evidence that supports the fact that the universe is billions of years old. Furthermore, it was Edwin Hubble who came up with the theory of universal expansion, though he based it on general relativity.

I strongly suggest you don't try to bring up theories you obviously don't understand.

I prefer listening to music, rather than arguing Ceationism Vs Evolutionism because people don't like to admit they are wrong. If one believes in evolution, most of the time he is automatically biased against Creationism.

Actually, I'm biased against people who assert facts without evidence. It would be nice if there was a God (someone to blame, if nothing else), but the fact remains that there's no evidence that one exists. Belief without evidence is stupid and illogical, and I don't choose to indulge. I believe that evolution occurs through the process of natural selection as there is vast amounts of objective evidence to support it. If the creationists ever come up with objective, non-disprovable evidence that their mythology is actually true, I'm willing to change my beliefs. However, until then, I'll treat them as the laughingstock, annoyance, or threat that they've proved themselves to be at various times.

Re:Creationism

[grammar fascist]

I think you're taking my comments completely wrong.

What I was saying is, that at the time the book was written, the the children of Israel, who had been in slavery for quite a long time, were not in a state to receive the entire, unadulterated truth. They had forgotten their roots. They had been worshipping other gods. They had largely forgotten how to write in the language they spoke. They needed milk, not meat.

They got the milk, as they needed. If you need divine proof of this, you can study some of what the Messiah himself said. Paul has some great things to say about it as well.

That should answer the substance of your tirade. Now on to your specifics:

1) I never said they were "illiterate natives." In fact, I do understand that Moses himself was quite educated, both in Egypt and by his father-in-law, Jethro.

2) I believe that all truth is consistent with itself. If substantiated findings contradict a certain interpretation, of course I'm going to look for viable alternatives. (That being said, I want you to understand that I most definitely do not give any weight to macroevolution.)

3) I did not call the Jews and their tradition stupid.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

Creationism is annoying, but scientific elitism is worse. *If* you believe in god, then creationism is a much simpiler idea then evolution. Hence, if you believed in god and you acted scientifically, you *would* accept creationism.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

You can try creationevidence.org and see if any information there is of use to you.

>>>Actually, I'm biased against people who assert facts without evidence. It would be nice if there was a God (someone to blame, if nothing else), but the fact remains that there's no evidence that one exists. Belief without evidence is stupid and illogical, and I don't choose to indulge. I believe that evolution occurs through the process of natural selection as there is vast amounts of objective evidence to support it. If the creationists ever come up with objective, non-disprovable evidence that their mythology is actually true, I'm willing to change my beliefs. However, until then, I'll treat them as the laughingstock, annoyance, or threat that they've proved themselves to be at various times.

Like I had said before...I wasn't aruging for one over the other, I was simply stating what I have seen (as in presentations, class...) and read.

It is ashame you treat all creationists as a laughinstock. Surely someone can choose to believe differently than you without them being a laughingstock. Whether or not you choose to believe the evidence is for you to decide. I believe creationist evidence more than I do evolutionist evidence. However, I surely do not consider all evolutionists laughingstocks, I just accept that they believe differently than I do and go on. I am not going to change anyone's opinion, and making fun of someone because they choose to believe in something different than myself is narrow-minded and unkind.

Anyway, I hope that you can look past the differences in belief you have with creationists. Not allowing yourself to enjoy the company of someone simply by the fact that he or she may believe that God (The God of the Christians and Jews) created the universe.

Likewise, I feel that creationists need to "look past" the same in others. Sure, it may be nice if everyone believed in creation, but that will not happen. I don't know any creationist that laughs at someone that believes in evolution just because that person believes in evolution.

It's like politics. All the parties may disagree, but the people (maybe not the politicians themselves) still get along, even though they are democrats, republicans, libertarians, greens, reforms, whatever... One side of my family is die-hard left-wing liberal democrats. The other side is die-hard right-wing republican. I get along with both sides wonderfully, even though I may not necessarily agree with the politics.

Re:Creationism

[junkgrep]

These Scriptures developed in a complex and scholarly rabbinical tradition, they were not simply handed down in the desert to the slaves. The way were interpreted by this tradition for millenia was as litteral days, and the Sabbath system wasn't merely a teaching tool: it was a direct outgrowth of that belief.

They got the milk, as they needed. If you need divine proof of this, you can study some of what the Messiah himself said. Paul has some great things to say about it as well.

This, of course, is the Christian interpretation of the Scriptures: the Jews see things quite differently, with the Christian re-interpretation seeming to be a very sloppy reading: yet another instance of people who had already decided what the truth would be, and had to massage the evidence around to justify it. (Which of Abraham's sons was which, Paul?)

I believe that all truth is consistent with itself.

And, apparently, you've already decided what the truth is, in this situation: that the text is true: all that has to be done is root around for the right way to make it true.

If substantiated findings contradict a certain interpretation, of course I'm going to look for viable alternatives.

There's a big difference between reading a text for its meaning, and "making" it say whatever you need it to. If the plain reading is wrong, then alternate meanings are really just a way of hedging ones bets (just like vague horoscopes). If evolution is proven false, no scientist is going to say "well, the natural selection a really just a very brilliant metaphor for the work that the alien designers did, and macromutation sings their glory." They are just going to admit that they got it wrong, and talk about the actual truth in plain terms.

Re:Creationism

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll go to church with you. And probably it'll make just as little sense as it did when I last went at age 12.

And nobody needs to "convince" you that evolution is fact. It does in fact happen; read a few peer-reviewed science journals and you'll easily see that it is.

Re:Creationism

[mikeplokta]

Creationism is annoying, but scientific elitism is worse. *If* you believe in god, then creationism is a much simpiler idea then evolution. Hence, if you believed in god and you acted scientifically, you *would* accept creationism.

Well, no. Even with a belief in God, creationism requires God to have planted massive amounts of deliberately misleading evidence for evolution. The simpler idea is that evolution happened just the way the evidence indicates.

troll allert

[StrawberryFrog]

Such is the case today. Evolution? Are you still going on about that? Nobody seriously believes that stuff anymore, it went out with phrenology.

Go away, troll. Go read Dennett's book 'Darwin's dangerous idea'. Don't come back until you are done.

Oh, and I suppose that the fact that none questions or discourses on the fact that 1 + 1 = 2 makes it no longer true any more?

And BTW, if 'Nobody seriously believes that stuff anymore', what is the replacement scientific theory that explains the diversity of life better?

Re:troll allert

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it couldn't possible be creationism. You would rather develop a theory of the entire universe being sneezed out of a giant hedgehog, and that life is simply an accident that occured when something happend from nothing. Yeah, that sounds good.

ALL PAGANS GO TO HELL

[Anonymous Coward]

Just thought I'd remind the heathens in the audience. Hope you enjoy your stay...

Re:ALL PAGANS GO TO HELL

[Anonymous Coward]

It's your hell...You burn in it :)

Re:ALL PAGANS GO TO HELL

[Anonymous Coward]

There is only one hell. For everyone, for all time. You may think that not believing in it means it doesn't apply to you. BZZZT! You're wrong...

Enjoy your eternity, jackass.

Re:ALL PAGANS GO TO HELL

[Anonymous Coward]

Anon, why do you turn away from Zeus? I'll tell you why. It's because you don't want to take responsibility for your actions.

Denying that hades exists wont' help you when your time comes. I'll pray for you.

Re:ALL PAGANS GO TO HELL

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you accepted Eris as you temporary saviour? (Hell, I thought all programmers were avatars of Eris!)

What would Emperor Norton do?

Re:ALL PAGANS GO TO HELL

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sad that you had that shit burned into your brain at such a young age.

Re:ALL PAGANS GO TO HELL

[Anonymous Coward]

Fnord.

knee-jerk "troll alert" alert

[PhysicsGenius]

You see, this is what I'm talking about. You've read Daniel Dennett's book. Wow. One book. By an armchair philosopher who's probably never seen the inside of a biolab.

Of course 1 + 1 = 2. Perhaps you could provide similarly simple and intuitive proof of evolution actually occurring in nature?

I've already mentioned what that prevailing theory is in biology: intelligent design. The complexity of life simply cannot be explained any other way.

Re:knee-jerk "troll alert" alert

[mofolotopo]

"I've already mentioned what that prevailing theory is in biology: intelligent design. The complexity of life simply cannot be explained any other way."

You are out of your farking mind. This must be a troll; I don't see how anyone could seriously believe that crap. I've been a bio student at three universities now, and have yet to meet ONE biologist who buys into intelligent design. The idea that natural selection can't explain the degree of diversity found in the world is an old one, and has been amply proven to be a load of hooey. Grant and Grant (a married research team from Princeton) showed natural selection proceeding at a rate of 2000-3000 darwins (the unit used to describe the rate of evolution) in a real-world situation. The highest rate necessary to explain the FASTEST change ever observed in the fossil record? Ready? 0.1 darwins. Parsimony mean anything to you?

Re:knee-jerk "troll alert" alert

[StrawberryFrog]

You've read Daniel Dennett's book. Wow. One book. Um no, I've mentioned reading one book. I've read others, trust me on this.

By an armchair philosopher who's probably never seen the inside of a biolab. You don't know much about the author, do you? Have you looked for other books in this field? Hint: slashdot has reviewed 2 this week.

Of course 1 + 1 = 2. Perhaps you could provide similarly simple and intuitive proof of evolution actually occurring in nature?

Naah, other have done that better, if you'd bother to educate yourself. See Dawkins and above references. It hasn't been disproved yet.

BTW, you don't have to believe in evolution: it believes in you. Disease bacteria aquire resistance to antibiotics, and closing your eyes won't make you well.

I've already mentioned what that prevailing theory is in biology: intelligent design. The complexity of life simply cannot be explained any other way.

Really. Would you mind giving me figures of how and by how much this theory prevails? For a start, what % of biological researchers believe it? And where they think the 'intelligent design comes from'?

Re:knee-jerk "troll alert" alert

[laertes]

First of all, you're a troll. Please consider explaining why you have any idea what you are talking about. You don't have to list the degrees you have, just how deeply you've studied this subject.

Seriously, how many biology--and more importantly--anthropology classes have you taken? Because if you just allow yourself to be a self-directed reader, you will (inevitably) get a skewed view of reality. You need the rigorous, objective treatment of a good old-fashioned <jed clampet>U-nee-verse-it-ee</jed clampet> to get an understanding of the state of the science.

By the way, not to nitpick, but do you have any idea how complicated a proof of 1+1=2 is? Depending on the axiomatic system that the proof is given in, (IIRC) the proof ranges from several dozen to several hundred steps. The most commonly accepted axiomatic system (based on Peano's postulates) falls in the latter category. My point: nothing in Science or Mathematics is either simple or intuitive. If you try to understand either intuitively (unless you're a Ramanujan, which I doubt) you're doomed to fail.

Re:knee-jerk "troll alert" alert

[Anonymous Coward]

The study by the Grants has been widely misrepresented. Yes it showed through their early trips that the beak sizes changed; but it would seem you are unaware of the fact that when the weather patterns shifted back, nearly all the change reverted back to the previous level. So it is a cyclic, not an accumulating, phenomenon they observed. Of course the evolutionist journals choose not to admit this (like National Geographic).

Re:knee-jerk "troll alert" alert

[Anonymous Coward]

Percentage of believers is misleading; you may not recall but in the early 70's Ford ran ads about how "15 million people can't be wrong", selling the Pinto. That was just before it came out that they burst into flame when in a rear-end collision. So 15 million people were wrong. Arguing by numbers is persuasive to some, but it does not prove anything about your point.

Disease bacteria are interesting. Did you know that some corpses of arctic explorers were recently found (they died long before antibiotics came on the scene) with resistant bacteria in them? It's just normal variation, simple mutational effects. Anyway after the "evolution" what were they? Bacteria. Not poodles. Not yeast. Not even eukaryotes.

Re:knee-jerk "troll alert" alert

[mofolotopo]

It was a phenomenon wherein environmental factors caused the differential reproductive success of organisms. That is the DEFINITION of natural selection. The fact that the environmental phenomenon (in this case El Nino) was cyclical is irrelevant, they have proven that the textbook definition of evolution by natural selection occurred. If you think that the cyclic nature of what they observed implies that it's not NS, you clearly don't understand NS very well.

Re:knee-jerk "troll alert" alert

[mofolotopo]

Whoops, to be absolutely correct, let me ammed that to "differential reproductive success of individuals based on hereditable differences between them. My intro bio teacher would kill me if I left the bit about heredity out.

Re:knee-jerk "troll alert" alert

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that it's natural selection, which no rational person can argue against IMO. However natural selection is not macro-evolution, which is what was being alleged. It was simply variation within a kind. The parent post said that this variation was proof of macro-evolution, which is of course inaccurate.

-1 Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

PhysicsGenius's post is funny and talking about the article. The parent post is slinging mud. I thought we've moved past the McCarthy era of labelling people you disagree with.

Just to clarify

[David Wong]

That's 5 percent who believe in a literal Biblical account of creation (Garden of Eden). The percentage of scientists who believe in a personal God (one who could answer prayers) is around 40% at last check, the percentage who believe in some kind of creator is higher than that.

Albert Einstein, for instance, was one of them.

Re:Just to clarify

[Reality Master 101]

Albert Einstein, for instance, was one of them.

Sheesh, not this old myth again. Here's one of the many pages that kill it. To quote Einstein,

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein in Albert Einstein: The Human Side

When Einstein used the word "God", he used it as a methaphor for existence.

Re:Just to clarify

[Laura J.]

Albert Einstein, for instance, was one of them.

Not so. This is taken from "Albert Einstein - The Human Side",a selection of his letters, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press, 1979.

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

I think we can take his own words to be the truth of the matter.

Re:Just to clarify

[Planesdragon]

When Einstein used the word "God", he used it as a methaphor for existence

Then he mis-used it, and should be smacked for doing so.

"God," "Allah," "Bhrama" "Goddess" and a slew of other names are very specific. Mis-using them when one means "godlike" or "existance" is simply inexcusable from an intelligent person engaging in any sort of public dialogue.

*sigh*

Re:Just to clarify

[Reality Master 101]

Mis-using them when one means "godlike" or "existance" is simply inexcusable from an intelligent person engaging in any sort of public dialogue.

Well, I don't know if I'd call it "inexcusable". That's a bit strong. I suppose it might have been clearer if he had said "Mother nature does not play dice" rather than "God does not play dice".

Thinking about it some more, I think he IS using the word in a reasonable way. You, as a Christian might not think so, but Christians don't have a monopoly on defining the nature of God. If Einstein wants to define "God" as "that which describes the nature of the universe" and is not a literal, sentient being, I think that's his and anyone's right. I think that's as good a definition of God as any.

Re:Just to clarify

[Ami Ganguli]

"Bhrama" is pretty specific. If you're Christian then I think (not 100% sure) Yahwe or Jehova might be the "specific" name for your God. I'm not sure about "Allah".

"God" is a very general term, used by all sorts of people to mean very different things. You may not like it, but language is a living thing and you and your religious group have very little influence over this.

If you want a word that applies only to your specific concept of God, then you need to make up your own. And even that doesn't guarantee that your new word won't be co-opted at some later point by people who feel it means something else.

Re:Just to clarify

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I suppose it might have been clearer if he had said "Mother nature does not play dice" rather than "God does not play dice".

Then the Wiccans would have claimed him. ;)

Re:Just to clarify

[junkgrep]

You're simply ignorant of other religions, in this case, Spinoza-like or Tolland-esque pantheism. The name is not "specific" to a certain religion just because you're louder.

Re:Just to clarify

[Planesdragon]

Well, I don't know if I'd call it "inexcusable". That's a bit strong. I suppose it might have been clearer if he had said "Mother nature does not play dice" rather than "God does not play dice"

Not really. "God does not play dice..." implies that God is seperate from what he's playing dice with.

I was going to post a follow-up post, but decide against it.

And at any rate... "God" means a distinct, sentient, powerful mind. Could be a group mind of souls. Could be Zeus. Could be Jesus, his poppa, and his momma. It doesn't mean "whatever someone chooses to worship."

A humanistic atheist doesn't use "God" to describe humanity--he just doesn't believe in God. The word has a general meaning, and that meaning (as opposed to the various permutations and interpretations that form religions) should be used without exception.

Re:Just to clarify

[Planesdragon]

"God" is a very general term, used by all sorts of people to mean very different things. You may not like it, but language is a living thing and you and your religious group have very little influence over this.

Acutally, we do.

"God" is a proper name for the Allmighty. If you're referring to a divine being that isn't eqivalent to the Supreme Universal All (which is always capitalized, even in pronouns), the proper grammatical use is "a god" or "-some other name for god-"

Allah is a specific arabic name, which means "The God", but applies to a particular spirit that just happens to be the God of the Hebrews, Moses, and J.C.

If you want a word that applies only to your specific concept of God, then you need to make up your own. And even that doesn't guarantee that your new word won't be co-opted at some later point by people who feel it means something else.

Scientists are not in the business of redefining language; they're in the business of keeping it the same to ensure the continuance of knowledge.

Knowledge evolves when it is mis-used by poets and the uneducated (two unrelated groups--I consider myself a "poet" for this sense) because of feel, and when it is changed because it does not express something current.

Einstein should have used a different term, or created something else. "God" used personally allready means something, and if he didn't intend that meaning, he mis-used the word.

Re:Just to clarify

[Ami Ganguli]

"God" is a proper name for the Allmighty. If you're referring to a divine being that isn't eqivalent to the Supreme Universal All (which is always capitalized, even in pronouns), the proper grammatical use is "a god" or "-some other name for god-"

These rules aren't absolute. "God" is frequently used as a metaphor, as Einstein used it. The fact that it's commonly used and understood this way makes it correct.

Scientists are not in the business of redefining language; they're in the business of keeping it the same to ensure the continuance of knowledge.

It's not about science, it's about language. Languages are created and changed by those who speak them.

Students in any field of study (not just science) define certain words narrowly for use within their trade. I suppose it's possible that theologians might share your definition of "God", but that doesn't limit how Einstein, as a physicist, uses the word.

Re:Just to clarify

[cje]

The proper name for the Christian god is "Yahweh" (or "Jehovah", if you prefer.) Now, I certainly have no objections to Christians using the generic "God", but as others have pointed out, pantheists and deists have used "God" for centuries. You may reject this usage on the basis that you reject pantheism and deism, but you should know that the pantheists and deists reject your usage for precisely the same reason. :-)

Re:Just to clarify

[susano_otter]

Most likely, the "proper" (maybe the true?) name of "God" is unutterable. "Jehova", "Yahweh", "G-d", &c. are all non-blasphemous (and also utterable) pointers to the proper name.

Assuming there is such an entity, of course.

Re:Just to clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sig is funny as hell...you should be modded up simply for that.

Re:Just to clarify

[Llywelyn]

Actually it looks like Einstein was a model Deist. Look up the word, it describes him perfectly.

Re:Just to clarify

[DunbarTheInept]

The use of "God" as a metaphor for the laws of nature in general used to be a lot more commonly done in Einstein's time than it is today. TODAY it typically isn't used that way anymore, but putting his statement into the context of the time it was spoken, it makes more sense. Einstein had also said that the only sort of "god" he believed in is a general sense of wonder when he examines how the universe works. It helps to remember that Judaism is an odd religion in which, since it is BOTH a religion and an ethnicity, there are a lot of what are called "secular Jews" who aren't the slightest bit believers in the religion, yet still want to be identified as members of the ethnicity, and use the terms and imagery of it for cultural reasons. Someone who had once been Christian and had become and atheist would be a lot less likely to use the term "God" in the way Einstein did.

Re:Just to clarify

[Planesdragon]

It helps to remember that Judaism is an odd religion in which, since it is BOTH a religion and an ethnicity, there are a lot of what are called "secular Jews" who aren't the slightest bit believers in the religion, yet still want to be identified as members of the ethnicity, and use the terms and imagery of it for cultural reasons. Someone who had once been Christian and had become and atheist would be a lot less likely to use the term "God" in the way Einstein did.

Einstein's abuse of the term may be understandable, but that doesn't make it not abuse.

On a different note, I am of the opinion that "secular jews"--and every other secular ethnicity that refuses to share--should put aisde their "uniqueness" and learn to share with, shape, and fully participate in their current nationality.

I am a Christian American male of mostly Western European descent, with a bit of native for flavor. Nevertheless, I am very proud of my Black, Jewish, Oriental heritge--none of which is by blood, but rather culture.

Re:Just to clarify

[junkgrep]

No. Deists believe in a separate Creator god who then has no interest or interaction in its creation. Einstein would be better termed a pantheist: one who's god IS existence/the universe.

Re:Just to clarify

[DunbarTheInept]

Einstein's abuse of the term may be understandable, but that doesn't make it not abuse.

Yeah, and that Issac Newton guy should be ashamed for calling his subject of study "Natural Philosophy". Physics is a science, not philosophy, geeze how abusive of the English language. Hint: Over time the meanings of words DO change. That makes it very difficult to read anything over a few centuries old, and sometimes it can even crop up in things that are only 50 years old. Take for example the word "gay". Or even "geek", which used to mean someone working in a circus side show.

It's not Einstein's fault that the usage of the word "god" that he chose ended up falling out of favor *after* he made his quote. (Unless you want to claim that he should have been able to predict how the language would mutate in the future).

Once upon a time, it was unnecessary for the language to distinguish between someone who says "god" meaning the dude up in the sky and "god" meaning the universe in general, because there were so few professed atheists around for which the difference was relevant. To the majority of people, the two were one in the same, and the language reflected this.

The demographic of English speakers has changed a lot in the last century. Christian culture used to permeate everywhere in the language as there were so few non-Christian English speakers that they didn't affect the common usage much. As the percentage of jewish, hindu, muslim, agnostic, atheist, etc speakers of English rose to the point where they were actually able to affect common usage, some idioms changed. English speakers no longer use "Christian Name" to refer to someone's first name, except on rare occasions. People rarely use the term "Christian" to refer to any generic good act, like they used to. Now it is reserved for those acts that are explicitly known to be religiously motivated. And people no longer use "god" to mean the universe in general, but once upon a time they did.

THIS is Hell!

[Anonymous Coward]

The black iron prison created by the false god is the real Hell. You have to find your way out to the real world.

The Roman empire never end.

not really an answer, but I'm curious...

[thefirelane]

3) What caused the Big Bang? What happened in the first 10E-38th of a second after the Big Bang happened?

Evolutionary theorists don't have to explain the big bang. For all they can God did cause the big bang, or even set up the universe billions of years ago. All they care is that No matter how the universe was created it was created with a framework that allowed evolution.
Now of course, as you might immagine, many people who believe in evolution also believe in other scientific theories, such as the big bang, but they do not require eachother, and refuting one does not refute the other. See what I mean?

4) How do you explain the relative thinness of the layer of dust on the Moon? It should be much deeper if the Moon is billions of years old.

This seems to make sense, from a limited perspective: ie. "My house gets dusty really fast, therefore really old things should have a lot of dust" Until you ask the simple question... why? IANANE (I am not a Nasa Engineer) so I don't know much about moon dust, but I just want to ask this question, because it is the basis of your point: Why should the moon have a lot of dust? I mean, there is little gravity, atmosphere, or water. These are the primary forces that lead to the creation of dust on Earth (errosion) so what would cause it on the moon. Like I say, I'm just curious, because often times people (in all branches) will use arguments because they sound correct, but never really examine them thinking "hmmm, now why is this correct?"

5) How do you reconcile the perfection of Scripture with the hoaxes and embarrassments of science (i.e., Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Lucy, etc.)

You realize of course, that this is not really an argument, or a provable point. In fact, it merely begs the question. You are saying "The scriptures are perfect, because God made them, and they are perfect". Do you see how this is circular? Anything taken on faith is "perfect" because you can not disprove faith. Of course Science, like any human institution, has been wrong about things in the past. We do not, however, give up scientific persuit anymore that you have abandoned religion because the world isn't flat or the center of the universe.

Like I said before, these are not really replies to your questions. My goal is more to probe your sense of beliefs, and examine the logical structure of your argument. I happen to not believe in creationism. This does not require that I not believe in God however. My reason is as follows:

My problem with creationism is that ultimatly, it doesn't give God any "credit." Why is it so difficult to believe that as an omnipotent being, God could have created a system so complex, beutiful, and functional as evolution. This system truely shows the amazing prowess of God, as it is a system so dynamic and creative that it has created all we see and know today, yet so complex that full understanding of this mechanism elludes us to this day. I find it much easier to accept than a simple "God created everything the way it is, that's it." Give God credit for being more creative than that.


---Lane

P.S. No, I usually don't reply to anonymous cowards, but I understand that being a creationist has a certian stigma and probably warrented the anonymous posting

Re:not really an answer, but I'm curious...

[Warped-Reality]

i read something a while ago about how before the moon landings, scientists calculated that how dust gathers on the moon (i don't remember exactly HOW it gets there, from small meteor/misc debris impacting most likely) that there would be several hundreds of feet of moon dust coverint the surface (accumulating from billions of years, etc, etc), but when they landed there, there was only an inch or so.

Re:not really an answer, but I'm curious...

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

From the talkorigins.org website:

(Morris is a well known creationist)

Morris says, regarding the dust influx rate:

"The best measurements have been made by Hans Pettersson, who obtained the figure of 14 million tons per year (1)." (Morris 1974, p. 152) [emphasis added]

Pettersson stood on a mountain top and collected dust there with a device intended for measuring smog levels. He published calculations which measured the amount of nickel he collected, assumed that nickel was only present in meteoritic dust, and assumed that some percentage of meteoritic dust was nickel, to get his final figures (that first assumption was wrong and caused his published figures to be a vast overestimate).

Pettersson's calculation resulted in the a figure of about 15 million tons per year. He believed that estimate to be an over-estimate, and indicated in the paper that 5 million tons per year was a much more likely figure.

Much more accurate measurements were available, from satellite penetration data (no possibility of earthly contamination), by the time Morris published Scientific Creationism. These more accurate measurements give the value of about 18,000 to 25,000 tons per year. These measurements agree with levels of meteoritic dust levels trapped in sediments on Earth. (That is, they are verified by an independent cross-check.)

Morris chooses to pick obsolete data with known problems, and call it the "best" measurement available. His calculations are based on a figure that is nearly three orders of magnitude too high. With the proper values, the expected depth of meteoritic dust on the moon is less than one foot.

-asb

Re:not really an answer, but I'm curious...

[junkgrep]

Yep: the high level of dustfall was based on an old miscalculation taken from an earthbound measurement. It put the level of dustfall many orders of magnitude higher than it actually turned out to be when measured on the moon.

Re:not really an answer, but I'm curious...

[Yunzil]

but when they landed there, there was only an inch or so.

Nah, they only sank in an inch. When you go to the beach, how far do you sink into the sand? And how deep is it?

Re:not really an answer, but I'm curious...

[hkmwbz]

How incredibly ironic. You are using science to disprove science. Make up your mind: Blind faith in God or science? If you are clever, you will do neither.

Transitional fossils

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Where are all of the transitional fossils?

Try looking around your church on Sunday morning.

Sorry, I know that's less than constructive, but arguing with creationists is so damned futile that I wonder why anybody even bothers anymore. I know, I know .. people who aren't educated might listen to them and somebody has got to set them straight, but still. These tired old arguments about "moon dust" and comets and transitional fossils have been thoroughly explained and debunked time and time again, and yet you people keep bringing them up.

It's interesting that you mention Piltdown Man. Yes, Piltdown Man was a hoax. But you know what? It was revealed to be a hoax by -- wait for it -- scientists. Furthermore, I defy you to find me a biology book written after 1950 that refers to Piltdown Man in any context other than it being a famous hoax.

Constrast this with creationists such as yourself, who continue to use the same bogus arguments (and in many cases outright lies) even after they have been thoroughly debunked. Ask yourself this question: is there a reason why you have to be intentionally (and in some cases maliciously) dishonest in the service of your faith? If so, what does that say about its value?

Not a flame, just an honest question.

Is the Slashdot Blacklist Dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been on the mysterious Slashdot Blacklist for maybe a year now, and today I was asked to MetaMod... is the blacklist dead, or do blacklisted users just fall off after they've "served their time"???

Re:Is the Slashdot Blacklist Dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

hey me too...I'm a conscientious objector to moderating though.

Fallacy of the excluded middle

[Bingo Foo]

I only write this because I'm anticipating how this slashdot thread will evolve.... It is far too rare to see a discussion on evolution that admits much room for alternatives between "10000 year Earth" and "Science has disproven the existence of God." Full disclosure: I am a Christian who believes in an 8-15 billion year old universe spawned by a "Big Bang" event. I believe biology is the result of evolution from inanimate, self-reproducing molecules up to and including human evolution, by processes indistinguishable from chance. I believe that human consciousness is the spiritual touch that makes us uniquely "in the image of God."

I got a call this morning from someone asking me to listen to "Focus on the Family" this morning because they were playing a tape of a debate held at Stanford between a creationist and evolutionist. I was immediately turned off because the creationist would make sweeping statements without support, like "evolution is based on bad and shaky evidence." Also, the evolutionist was assumed by the audience to be driven by an anti-God agenda, and gave no evidence to the contrary.

If the reason for holding these "debates" is to foster intellectual honesty in "both camps," then at least they should admit that there are a great number of reasonable people who hold neither of these publicized views. By limiting the debate to these two views they present the undecided with a false dichotomy, and by golly, with as effective as science is elsewhere, that must mean that there is no God!

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[pauly_thumbs]

This Dicohotomy or 'All or None' attitude is exactly
what politicians do. Republicans wind up being pro-life Dems. Pro-choice
until they are both blue in the face and ranting foaming at the mouth Zelots.
the moderates get disenchanted, and disenfranchised and then they don't vote
then the only people who are voting are the zelots.

Democracy is the worst political system on earth, except for every other political system- Churchill

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[dhogaza]

It is far too rare to see a discussion on evolution that admits much room for alternatives between "10000 year Earth" and "Science has disproven the existence of God."

Which just goes to show you don't understand the position of science. Science only considers the natural world and can say nothing about the existence or non-existence of any supernatural being .

Science does tell us that evolution is a fact, because it is an observed phenomena. Science can't tell us if evolution is driven by a supernatural being or not. However science has developed a very strong theory about evolution that explains it in terms entirely consistent with the natural world.

So the strongest statement science can make is that you need not invoke God to explain evolution as observed in the fossil record or in living ecosystems.

But the fact that such an explanation exists does not deny the existence of God.

This is why so many scientists have no problem reconciling their belief in God with science. Faith and science operate in different realms, as someone mentioned in a previous post. Of course many scientists don't believe in God, and many who do believe in God aren't Christian, not surprising given the fact that science is a world-wide profession.

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[Kynde]

If the reason for holding these "debates" is to foster intellectual honesty in "both camps," then at least they should admit that there are a great number of reasonable people who hold neither of these publicized views. By limiting the debate to these two views they present the undecided with a false dichotomy, and by golly, with as effective as science is elsewhere, that must mean that there is no God!

Marvellous points indeed, and I fully agree. Most religious people that I know of are far from creationism. Actually I cannot believe that anyone in their right minds would actually believe and promote creationism. You go figure out what meen there with "in their right minds".

BUT I must say that among western scientists outside US the whole god discussion has been dropped aswell. Due to it being unnecessary assumption. It serves no purpose whatsoever, taken, that you don't need the (should I even say childish) comfort a belief to some higher power can bring you.

Just before you go ranting back at me, I must clarify that I'm not denying gods existence, I'm merely stating that as an uncausal entity it's not worth the hypothesis.

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[junkgrep]

You should know that creationists often explicitly seek to debate only with people who anti-God agendas, and even simply refuse to accept that evolutionary theorists are anything but, even when they roundly deny it, and note that they are believers too. You should read about Michael Shermer's experience debating Gish in his book "Why People Believe Weird Things" (note, "God" is not one of the "weird things" he talks about, though the cult of Ayn Rand, creationism, Holocaust denial, recovered memory, etc. are)

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[Anonymous Coward]

As an individual with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, I must ask: can you point me to some research done that proves macro evolution? Like maybe demonstrating that new types of animals can evolve "in the lab" such as as completely new type of rodent or insect.

This is a genuine question. Know that I'm not trying to grill or heckle you.

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[Matimus]

I disagree. Doesnt science hope to explain everything. If there is a God, then one day science will explain him. I don't think that there is any benefit to going about science in either mind set(God, no God). Science is best when done with an open mind.

Perhaps there are sciences that will not ever intersect with any portion of this debate (mathematics). But I assure you, as long as there is no solid proof in either direction, the debate will continue. I say solid because as it now stands neither group is satisfied with the others answers, not that nobody has any good evidence. Any proof, by nature, would be scientific.

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[JMan1]

"I believe that human consciousness is the spiritual touch that makes us uniquely 'in the image of God.'"

What about other primate consciousness. Obviously it's not on the same level as ours, but does an ape really lack consciousness? They can communicate (with a subset of sign language even!,) use tools, and certainly feel emotion. Do they just have some Godly image? Or is there a qualitative difference between them and us, rather than a quantitative one?

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[JMan1]

I don't know of an example, but I'd like to point out that sharp distinctions between species probably don't really exist. It's unlikely that a mother ever gives birth to a member of a new species. It's more that through tons of generations, an organism gets more and more different so that at some point, you can look back and say, this organism is of a different species than it's great-great-great-great-...-grandmother. The reason this isn't obvious is because there are usually not any organisms still around that are exactly that ancestor's species--they've either become the species of the descendant also, become different species, or died out.

In the lab, even with organisms that reproduce very frequently, it'd be hard to give them enough time (seeing that it generally takes millions of years) to actually witness macro evolution. However, by looking at comparative anatomy, embryology, DNA, mitochondria, etc. etc. etc., we certainly get a lot of evidence supporting the fact that we all have common ancestors. You can read books by Richard Dawkins, although he does have a pretty strong atheistic slant.

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[BCGlorfindel]

For a good look at the interpretations of evidence for macro evolution check the 2 following sites www.talkorigins.org and www.trueorigin.org In particular read the 29 evidences of macro evolution and the corresponding counter document on true origin.

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[rabidcow]

It is far too rare to see a discussion on evolution that admits much room for alternatives between "10000 year Earth" and "Science has disproven the existence of God."

Which just goes to show you don't understand the position of science. Science only considers the natural world and can say nothing about the existence or non-existence of any supernatural being.

Which just goes to show you need to work on your reading comprehension skills. It is not science that says God does not exist, it is the people who hold this position. The poster is specifically saying that these two positions are not the only options. He is not saying that "Science has disproven the existence of God," neither is he saying "10000 year Earth" is true. In fact, it is implied that they are both false. Unfortunately, and I have seen the same thing, these seem to often be the only positions argued against, and most of the time, the only positions given.

I think the hardest part is there is no one "Creationism," it's more a moving target that can escape one argument by evolving into something else unless you pin down what it means to the person you are dealing with.

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[Bingo Foo]

Which just goes to show you don't understand the position of science. Science only considers the natural world and can say nothing about the existence or non-existence of any supernatural being .

I understand perfectly the position of science; I am a scientist. As such, I disagree when others, in the name of science, claim to disprove the existence of anything (super|extra|non|hypo|infra|un)natural. You sound like you understand some of the limitations of science, and so it's not you I'm complaining about.

The problem lies in the fact that anyone involved in organizing one of these "debates" has an agenda that they consider to be more important than the actual free exchange of ideas. One other poster here said that they hold the debates to make creationists look like fools. I believe it. If the extreme young-Earth creationists they present look like fools and the only alternative given, by the design of the moderators and sponsors is, "There is no God," then the moderators and sponsors are actually subverting the spirit of science for their agenda.

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks!

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you.

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[forgotmypassword]

I think perhaps you and many other people have a confused opinion on the role of science and religion. I think I can clear this up.

1) (some) Christians take a very stupid stance against science that makes them look stupid and be very vulnerable to attack
2) The people who hate Christianity want to attack it, evolution gives them ammunition
3) Some scientists hate Christianity

If there is ever a scientist that it is a scientific truth that God does or does not exist, then he should have his title taken away - or be the next messiah.

Perhaps if many Christians kept up an onslaught against the Telitubbies, then there would be a great wave of Telitubbie attacks upon religion. And people would conclude that fans of PBS hate religion.

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[superyooser]

If there is a God, then one day science will explain him.

If there is Dynamic HTML, then one day Lynx will explain it.

Re:Fallacy of the excluded middle

[Matimus]

I guess you are right, because its impossible to understand everything about a system without leaving the system. Meaning that it is virtually impossible for humans to know everything about the universe without leaving it (impossible). If we assume that God is at a higher level than the universe (he would have to be to create it), then it is reasonable to say that perhaps science could explain everything about the universe as well as is possible, without ever encountering God. My point was only that God is part of the cosmos, and science, whose goal is to explain the cosmos, does not exclude him.

It Takes All Kinds

[Anonymous Coward]

God only holds you accountable for for
the values of your religion. If your one
of those terds that claims one religion,
but borrows from other religions- you
get punished in both of them

As for the theory of ebolution,it hasn't
applied on earth for 500 million years.
Earth is now evolving on a group level, hence
such anti survival mechanisms as a
personal conscience,parental protectiveness,
law, etc where the individual acts to save
the world group in preference to personal
agrandisment.
SPQR

Molecular Biology

[PineHall]

... but he does not point out that it is impossible to understand molecular biology adequately unless it is seen in an evolutionary context. The interesting question, therefore, is why this fact is not always recognized.

Perhaps it is because some molecular biologists (Behe) see a intellegent design in molecular biology and do not see it a strictly evolutionary context.

Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics

[limekiller4]

If you can handle the 800+ pages, Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics is a well-balanced point-counterpoint style essay collection on the current state of this movement. Johnson, Plantinga, Behe, Dembski, Dawkins and Gould, just to name a few.

I'm about 300 pages in and so far it's been primarily ID proponents. The general theme seems to be that:

1. naturalism, the foundation upon which Darwinism exists, is dogmatic at it's core, unneccessarily restricts the boundaries of truth (ie, we don't care if God is outside the realm of the testable, we want to know if it's true),
   
2. Darwinism cannot possibly account for complex structures (see Darwin on Trial and Darwins Black Box ), a certain "irreducable complexity" exists and;
   
3. since naturalism is false, an intelligent designer must account for the biodiversity and complexity that we see.
   

The critics fire back with an examination as to why limiting science to the knowable is fundamental and not arbitrary, easily demonstrate how the IC argument falls apart (in a nutshell, it makes the assumption that (a) only one sequence "works" and (b) only one sequence could possibly do the job). In other words, it's audience is the theists, it was never meant to be taken seriously, which is why they don't publish in peer-reviewed journals.

If you have any interest in this subject, I strongly recommend picking it up. The "neo creo" arguments are not only compelling on their face but this crowd is organized, teaching in major colleges, well-funded, and they have a plan. It would be a mistake to shrug them off as irrelevant.

Re:Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics

[RatBastard]

I really wish I knew what the hell you are talking about. I've tried to parse your post into some kind of sense but I just can't do it. I can't tell what your position is at all.

Re:Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics

[limekiller4]

RatBastard writes:
"I really wish I knew what the hell you are talking about. I've tried to parse your post into some kind of sense but I just can't do it. I can't tell what your position is at all."

(16:45:27) jason: Can you do me a favor?
(16:45:38) mike: What?
(16:45:42) jason: Read this post. Tell me if it makes sense to you.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=38993&ci d=4170 319
(16:45:56) mike: Hang on.
(16:47:21) jason: Someone complained they couldn't understand what I was saying.
(16:47:26) jason: I'm wondering if it's just me, or...?
(16:51:50) mike: No, it's clearly written.
(16:51:54) jason: Thx.

Read it again, I guess.

Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

A very accurate description of the situation!

Good grief are we going through this again???

[Christianfreak]

Comment section of this article:

Religious person: Evolution is wrong.
Everyone else: We can prove that creationism is stupid just search on Google!
Religious Person: but evolution is wrong to because bla bla
Everyone else: Well you're a stupid fool for believing that crap bla bla bla ...

There, its all there, nothing else has to be said you can go on to a different article now.

This wouldn't be such a big issue if people realized that the Bible was written by people who didn't understand science for people who didn't understand science, therefore its a metaphor, what's important to the creation story is WHO(God) and WHY (he wanted companions). Rather than HOW which for the most part is left to our imagination, if we scientifically prove evolution then great, that doesn't change WHO and WHY (but you can choose to believe that or not).

I agree this issue would also go away if more Christians themselves would realize that faithwise this is a non-issue, that they can believe whatever they want about where we came from but that Loving Thy Neighbor is far far far more important that flamewars over evolution!

That said how is evolution something that matters on a technology site anyway? I get the feeling that these articles are here just to start pointless flamewars over religion. Hey! There's enough fighting over religion in the world without adding it to /.! Enough with these articles already! /rant

Re:Good grief are we going through this again???

[athlon02]

A couple of my thoughts on your comment, for what it's worth (and honestly, I'm not trying to flame, just trying to offer a Biblical view of your comment):

1 Peter 3:15 tells Christians they need to always be ready to give others an answer for why they believe what they believe. And 2 Timothy 2:15 says to study. So it's not enough to know who created the universe and why. It *IS* important to know how it was created. Why? So that we can try and convert other people to Christianity. And not everyone that you try to convert to Christianity is going to know the Bible or even believe it. In such cases, you have to start at a point *before* showing them what the Bible says, including Christian evidences that help to prove what the Bible says regarding how the universe came into play.

Another thought on the matter is this: is God ever wordy in the Bible? (and if you want to comment on this, please be objective, no smart-alec comments that are aimed to only cause flames). From what I see the Bible is very concise... the account of the creation of the universe is told in one chapter, not to mention, we only have a record of about 3 years of Jesus' life, when he lived about 33 years... things like this. So if God is concise, and only says what He wants us to know, then why do we have the account of creation, if it's a non-issue of how the universe got here?

Those are just my thoughts on this, and again, it's not meant as a flame, merely as a comment of a concerned Christian, who wants others to do the right thing.

Re:Good grief are we going through this again???

[ScaryClown]

One thing that always bothers me about these debates is that I think there are two separate issues that people get mixed up with.

One is the debate on whether or not man evolved from monkeys and the other is the age of the earth. True most conservative Christians believe that the earth was created in a literal seven days but in my opinion that is mostly due to their desire to avoid giving any length of time for evolution to happen.

For my personal belief I think that the age of the earth is very, very old (I am not a literal 7 days person) due to a large amount of scientific evidence and more theological flexibility in Genesis chapter one, however I do have theological issues with evolution mainly based on the fall of Adam (Genesis 2 and 3) and the comparisson of Adam to Christ (Romans 5:12-21) but this is not really the forum to discuss ...

The fact is though that I believe nature shows truth about God and that the Bible shows truth about God. I don't believe that either are in error but that our view of one or the other is.

Re:Good grief are we going through this again???

[Christianfreak]

Thank you for your comment, I'm a Christian too and my point is that people who claim to be Christian shouldn't start pointless arguments over what can be interpreted as a metaphor.

So if God is concise, and only says what He wants us to know, then why do we have the account of creation, if it's a non-issue of how the universe got here?

Exactly my point!!! He tells us what he wants us to know. The Creation story really doesn't say much how other than 'God did it', 'God spoke and there was light'. It doesn't go into fine detail and science of the whole thing, it's there to point out that God being all powerful created the world and us. I don't dispute that, but for all we know God spoke "Let there be light" and then the big bang happened creating stars and galaxies and such and thus creating: light.

By that interpretation the whole theory of evolution would fit inside the creation story. And if you get hung up on the 7 days thing, Jesus himself later says "A day is but a 1000 years to God" (sorry I couldn't find the ref) saying that God is not bound by time, which leads me to believe that the 7 days is a metaphor to put the vast amount of time for creation into terms (especially ancient) humans could understand.

God created it, that's the point. How he created it is the stuff of flamewar.

Christianity stands on Jesus, arguing details of Creation makes us sound foolish and stupid. We as Christians need to do what Jesus would do (i know that's horribly cliche'). I'm pretty sure that Jesus would not participate in a creation argument nor does he approve of them.

Re:Good grief are we going through this again???

[Overdrive_SS]

I believe this is the article I was looking for that gives a few reasons why faithwise this is an issue. Answers In Genesis
If that isn't the right link feel free to look around the sight, plenty of other interesting articles to read.

Re:Good grief are we going through this again???

[ShavenYak]

The fact is though that I believe nature shows truth about God and that the Bible shows truth about God. I don't believe that either are in error but that our view of one or the other is.

Well obviously nature isn't in error. Unless the Bible is like the Hitchhiker's Guide - where it disagrees with reality, reality has it wrong.

Re:Good grief are we going through this again???

[forgotmypassword]

By that interpretation the whole theory of evolution would fit inside the creation story. And if you get hung up on the 7 days thing, Jesus himself later says "A day is but a 1000 years to God" (sorry I couldn't find the ref) saying that God is not bound by time, which leads me to believe that the 7 days is a metaphor to put the vast amount of time for creation into terms (especially ancient) humans could understand.

If God is traveling arbitrarily close to the speed of light from the Earth's reference frame, then each day can be arbitrarily long.

And thus special relativity saves the fundamentalist God just as swift as it destroyed Santa Claus.

Re:Good grief are we going through this again???

[athlon02]

The passage you are thinking of is 2 Peter 3:8. But the thing is the verse says that a day *IS AS* a 1000 years, not a day *IS* a 1000 years. The word "as" is very important here as it denotes simile, rather than a literal "1 day == 1000 years" to God. The Hebrew word used for day in Genesis 1 is "yom" meaning 1 literal 24 hour period of time. And if memory serves the word for day when the Bible talks about Jesus rising after 3 days and such is the Greek equivalent of yom. So to say the 6 days of creation were each 1 billion years would mean that it's taking Jesus 1 billion years to rise from the dead and according to 1 Corinthians 15:12-14 Christianity is a waste of our time and all Christians today are doomed sinners.

As for the how God actually did it, the Bible plainly says that God said "Let there be light." I imagine (correct me if I'm wrong) that you believe that God is omnipotent (all powerful), along with omniscient (all knowing) and omnipresent (He's everywhere). Now if God is all powerful, should we believe He's not capable of speaking light, along with all creation, into existence? Or is it safe for us to say that the Bible doesn't really say?

By the way, slightly off-topic, I find http://bible.gospelcom.net a good site to use when you run into those inevitable "I can't remember the verse offhand" situations that we all run into ;)

Re:Good grief are we going through this again???

[superyooser]

"Can't we all just get along?" - Jesus ... No, sorry. Jesus didn't say that. Quite the contrary, actually. I'm going to be harsh here, but it is better to speak the truth that hurts and then heals, than to speak a lie that will comfort and then kill.

The reason there is no middle ground is because it's clearly wrong as seen from both sides. Add even a drop of vinegar to your glass of pure water, and the whole of it becomes distasteful.

I take the Bible literally, but that doesn't mean that every passage is literal. The Bible (from the Greek biblion - a collection of writings) is composed of many different kinds of writing; some are musical lyrics, some poetry, some historical account, some epistles, some prophecy or apocalyptic, and parts of some are parables. You have to read each book or passage according to what kind of writing it is.

Now, Genesis was clearly not written as poetry. Forms of poetry are as easy to discern from prose in Hebrew as they are in English. Even if they lay person should have some trouble with discernment, it is not difficult for language scholars. Genesis is also not a book of songs. Obviously not a letter. Not prophetic as a whole. It is written as a historical account of origins that pertain to us. Historical accounts are written in as literal a manner as possible. Furthermore, when reading Genesis (or any other book), it's disingenuous to haphazardly switch between reading literally and figuratively depending upon the verse's "believability". That's no way to go about interpreting any writing.

What theistic evolutionists, such as yourself, try to say is that evolution occurs within the boundaries of Genesis. Even if we suppose that Moses meant to write "many a millennia" instead of "day," it doesn't work. According to Genesis, plants were created on the third day... but the sun was not created until the fourth day! Please tell me what version of evolution is compatible with this. Photosynthesis before the sun? Materialistic science would reject this miracle, and it would not accept the notion that (life-sustaining) light on the earth existed before the sun (light created on first day). Also, the order that animals were created conflicts with the supposed order of evolution. There are many, many other irreconcilable conflicts, both physical and theological. Here is just a sampling.

1. Bible: Creation is completed (Genesis 2:3)
Evolution: Creative processes continuing.

2. Bible: Oceans before land (Genesis 1:2)
Evolution: Land before oceans.

3. Bible: First life on land (Genesis 1:11)
Evolution: Life began in the oceans.

4. Bible: First life was land plants (Genesis 1:11)
Evolution: Marine organisms evolved first.

5. Bible: Earth before sun and stars (Genesis 1:14-19)
Evolution: Sun and stars before earth.

6. Bible: Fruit trees before fishes (Genesis 1:11,20,21)
Evolution: All fishes before fruit trees.

7. Bible: Birds and fishes created on the fifth day (Genesis 1:20,21)
Evolution: Fishes evolved over hundreds of millions of years before birds appeared.

8. Bible: Birds before insects (Genesis 1:20-31; Leviticus 11)
Evolution: Insects before birds.

9. Bible: Whales before reptiles (Genesis 1:20-31)
Evolution: Reptiles before whales.

10. Bible: Birds before reptiles (Genesis 1:20-31)
Evolution: Reptiles before birds.

11. Bible: Man before rain (Genesis 2:5)
Evolution: Rain before man.

12. Bible: Man before woman (Genesis 2:21-22)
Evolution: Woman before man (by genetics).

13. Bible: Light before the sun (Genesis 1:3-19)
Evolution: Sun before any light (on earth).

14. Bible: Plants before the sun (Genesis 1:11-19)
Evolution: Sun before any plants.

15. Bible: Man exercised dominion over all organisms (Genesis 1:28)
Evolution: Most organisms extinct before man evolved.

16. Bible: Man originally a vegetarian (Genesis 1:29)
Evolution: Man originally a meat-eater.

17. Bible: Man's sin is the cause of death (Romans 5:12)
Evolution: Struggle and death existent long before the evolution of man.

So you see, they are not compatible. You can't fit man's BADC into God's ABCD. God is not a "god of the gaps" for man's "truth." Science is what should be used to fill in the gaps of God's truth. Wipe a clean slate, and START with the Bible for your foundation of Truth; THEN, interpret scientific observations in light of what the Bible says.

Does this seem extreme to you, Christianfreak? Is the emphasis on "Christian" or "freak"? I don't mean to be insulting; I'm just asking a probing question. You have Christ in your name, but you seem to have Darwin in your heart. Having Jesus there too is like being a house divided against itself. Since you believe in Jesus, you should believe also in what Jesus believed. As a follower and student of the Master, Teacher, Creator of the Universe, Son of God, Jesus Christ, it should be the yearning of your heart to believe all things and do all things as He did.

Do you suppose that Jesus believed in evolution? Many people will argue that the scribes of the Bible didn't know much about science. But remember, Jesus was both fully man and fully God. Jesus is the Creator in human form as told in John 1:1 - the other "In the beginning" passage. If evolution were true, then Jesus would have known it! However, there is no evidence that Jesus believed in evolution.

The six literal workdays of the week are based on the six literal workdays of Creation. When the Pharisees criticized Jesus for performing miracles, which they deemed to be "work," on the Sabbath day (the seventh day for rest), in Mark 2:27, He explicitly said, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." Here you have the Lord's personal endorsement of the establishment of a literal day to be the Sabbath in parallel to God's literal day of rest.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
- Genesis 2:2-3

You are lying to yourself if you try to read millions or billions of years into this. It demonstrates a lack of faith if you can't believe Genesis the way it's plainly written. You are using Evolutionary premises as your foundation for interpreting the Bible, rather than the other way around. You need to sit down and think about what really is your foundation - what you believe first and foremost. For brevity's sake I will put my last point in a nutshell, although it is extremely important.

Since we know that the Gospels are literal, historical accounts of the Redeemer (who was born of the virgin Mary), then Genesis also has to be a literal, historical account of the first sinner (the "Faller") (who was made directly from the dust of the ground - no hint of via tadpoles, pygmies, and chimps in Genesis 2:7 or anywhere else in the Bible).

Since we know that Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, is a literal man, then Adam of the Garden of Eden, the first man, must have been a literal man (created on the sixth day), as well.

Notice how the accounts of both men's lives are inextricably linked to the accounts of their orgins. Six-day-Creation-Adam-Sin and Virgin-birth-Christ-Redemption are all bound together. If one is literal, they must all be literal.

If there was no Adam, then there is no need for a Savior. Christianity stands on Jesus, and Jesus stands on the six-day Creation.

Re:Good grief are we going through this again???

[Anonymous Coward]

The Bible (from the Greek biblion - a collection of writings) is composed of many different kinds of writing; some are musical lyrics, some poetry, some historical account, some epistles, some prophecy or apocalyptic, and parts of some are parables.

So. . . why is Genesis not a parable? Because it is written litterally for "history"? Not dramatic effect? Moses wasn't into drama?

Re:Good grief are we going through this again???

[superyooser]

When I said "parts of some [books] are parables," I was referring to the parables told by Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In each instance, Jesus makes it perfectly clear that He is telling a fictional story as a parable. In the larger sense, the telling of the parable is of an historical account, although the story itself is not historical. If Moses had been telling a parable, he would have designated it so.

Re:Good grief are we going through this again???

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for clearing that up Moses. . .oh wait you're not Moses.

Thanks for clearing up your interpretation of Genesis. It still seems like a story, made up to explain something even you don't know the answer to.

Lebowski - "Well that's, uh, just like your opinion, man."

The TRUTH is out there

[stevet96]

For more accurate information check out:
http://family.org/cforum/topics/a0018793.cfm

also for a better book try

Darwin on Trial
by Dr. Phillip Johnson

also check out these videos
http://www.family.org/resources/itempg.cfm ?itemid= 3043&refcd=OL02XRDRC&tvar=n
http://www.family.org /resources/itempg.cfm?itemid= 3042&refcd=OL02XRDRC&tvar=n

Re:The TRUTH is out there

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

No. The truth is here

YOU are out there.

Re:The TRUTH is out there

[junkgrep]

Ah yes, Johnson. Why are lawyers suddenly considered the most honest and upright of all professionals, just because they say things you like? Johnson brings the sort of ethics to the debate that a personal injury lawyer brings to law. In other words: he makes a lot of slanderous accusations and practiced usage of logical fallacy. His claims have been refuted countless times in books like "Tower of Babel," but even when it's proven how wrong he is, even after he admits it, like all creationists, he simply continues on making the same dishonest claims.

Re:The TRUTH is out there

[Anonymous Coward]

> For more accurate information check out:
[...]

More accurate than WHAT, pray tell?

I find the link below from the site particularly ironic, though. (It's about teaching students dritical thinking, which is very, very dangerous to fundies. After all, we wouldn't want the bible scrutinized that way, would we? :) )

http://family.org/cforum/teachersmag/features/a0 00 0850.html

We (The USA) are sorry.

[DAldredge]

We (The USA) are sorry.

In the future when Europe is on the verge of falling to a European dictator, we will leave Europe alone.

When Europe need to be rebuilt after that war, we will leave Europe alone.

When Europe need protection from forces from the East, we will leave Europe alone.

When Europe needs help in it's own backyard to bring down yet another dictator who is killing people just because of the ethnic background, we will leave Europe alone.

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[alienmole]

You (The USA) apparently have a guilty conscience. I was talking about creationists. I don't credit the creationists and their ilk with creating US foreign policy, although they might influence it. However, I've found that people with beliefs like that are far more likely to have uninformed views about the world outside the US, and see things purely in us vs. them terms. Never having travelled outside the US doesn't help. Parochialism is bad; religious extremism tends to foster the worst kind of parochialism.

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[Zmai]

Europe thanks you.

Zmai.

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[Anonymous Coward]

When Europe needs help to deal with the flooding caused by greenhouse gasses produced by the USA, we will leave Europe alone.

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[DAldredge]

As we speek, a team from the US is flying over to Eastern Europe to copy there highly effective pollution control systems. Because everyone know the rest of the world is 100% energy efficent and has not contributed even 0.00001% to global warming.

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[DAldredge]

Why can't a creationist also belive in evolution?

Also, it is a lot easier for a European to go to another country because the countries are so close to each other. The 375+ miles I drive to see my daughters would get from one country to another in a lot of Europe. In the US it gets me from Texas to just near the OK/AK border.It is rather expensive for a large portion of the people in the US to go to another country.

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The fact that the US has done some wonderful things in the past doesn't mean that it should be criticized for doing dumb things now, nor that it shouldn't be held up unfavorably for comparison to other societies that happen to be handling certain things (e.g. science education) better. In fact, one of the main things that has historically made the US a good place to live is its ability and willingness to absorb good ideas from elsewhere. If you think that the Way The US Is right now is Perfect And Eternal And The One True Way, then I not-so-respectfully suggest that you have no understanding of what the US actually is.

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, you'll sell arms to both sides of a European conflict and only get involved when a pacific ally of one side forces you into a war with it (and thus its allies) by bombing one of your harbors ?
Oh wait..

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[Scrameustache]

Are you actually using the "we saved your ass in WWII" argument? Man! I thought only homer Simpson said things like that!

Wow!

And I guess that the united states were created by god from clay? No european country ever had to, you know, send a few people over, a couple of beasts of burden here and there, a few tools...none of that?
No military aid in your old wars or anything...no european country ever gave the US a giant statue to put in its harbor...the thing was there when you arrived, right?

When the US helped its european fiends, it was 1) looking out for its own interests and 2) REPAYING A DEPT, yup, they don,t owe you, you owed them.

And I guess from your "tone" that you feel that if european counties ever dare to make the US look bad by being more advanced that you are, you will feel the need for revenge and hope (or get the CIA to help) that a blody war kills 'em? Jeez...good christians indeed!

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[alienmole]

Why can't a creationist also belive in evolution?

Sorry, I guess I was thinking of the kind of creationist that believes the Earth is 4000 years old, etc. That's usually coupled with a large set of irrational beliefs denying evidence that's been collected by a large body of scientists around the world, including many Christians and members of other religions.

You're right about the difficulty most US residents have in travelling to other countries (other than Mexico or Canada). Although for many Americans, I suspect it's much more of a psychological block than a financial one - you can fly New York to London for $265 round trip, on Virgin Atlantic.

Of course, it'll be quite a bit more than that from Texas - which I'm sure does go a long way towards explaining the much higher level of fundamentalism in the central US states, which are physically isolated in a way that only has an equivalent in some other physically large countries like perhaps China, India, Brazil, Russia.

That might be fine if the US really was isolationist, but unfortunately (for you too), the US has a strong military presence in the Middle East, primarily to protect its oil interests. The combination of isolationism and global interventionism makes for some strange policies, and has some unfortunate consequences.

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[alienmole]

Are you actually using the "we saved your ass in WWII" argument? Man! I thought only homer Simpson said things like that!

If only! Where do you think Homer got it from?

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Dave,

you do realize that we would have gotten our asses kicked in WWII if it werent for the Russians holding off hitler and occupying the Japanese, right?

For someone as smart as you, you should be a little more educated

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear troll, you do realize that Russia was not concerned with japan until germany had fallen?

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[God! Awful]

Are you actually using the "we saved your ass in WWII" argument? Man! I thought only homer Simpson said things like that!

Hey, Tony Blair said it on (inter)national TV.

-a

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[God! Awful]

In the future when Europe is on the verge of falling to a European dictator, we will leave Europe alone.

No you won't. You'll wait to see if England, Canada, and Australia can defeat the enemy on their own, and if they can't then you'll swoop in to save the day.

-a

Re:We (The USA) are sorry.

[junkgrep]

"Creationist" usually refers to the idea that evolution is wrong. People who believe that god created the world are not out of line with evolutionary theory and don't have any special name ("mainstream Christians?"), nor are those that think god directed evolution (often called theistic-evolution).

Of course, there ARE people who believe that literal creationism and evolution are true, which is quite contradictory, but works to them under the idea that the litteral truth of the Bible and the truth of reality are two different worlds, usually with the litteral Bible world being more important to our spirits and the normal reality to our bodies.

There IS a lot of dust on the moon

[realmolo]

Dear retarded creationist: Here's the answer for your little "moon dust" theory. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_159a.html See, it's all about logic. Logic is handy. You should try it.

They're not that specific

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, "God" and "Allah" are one and the same. Muslims believe in the same deity as Christians and Jews, they just call Him by a different name.

Second of all, you seem to think that "God" can be used only to refer to your God, just like the name "Ralph Smith" can be used only to refer to your neighbor Ralph Smith.

When I use "God," I'm referring to an entity that I think you would agree is quite different than the entity you refer to by that name, just as the Ralph Smith I refer to is different from the Ralph Smith you know. It's quite egotistical to think that the only entity that can bear the name "God" is the deity that you believe in.

Re:They're not that specific

[Anonymous Coward]

Allah was the name of a local "god" in the village where Mohammed grew up, he is not the same god. (He at a later date was merged with the hebrew god of Abraham)

Re:They're not that specific

[Bingo Foo]

I know many Christian Arabs who use the word "Allah" to describe God as they see Him. That's just part of the arabic language. Depending on where he was when he said it, Einstein may have actually used the word "Gott" in that quote posted here and all around. Does that mean he was not referring to "God?"

Wrong evolution

[dago]

120 comments and still not a single one about one of the most important evolution of this year !!!

Textual Literalism

[SIGFPE]

Textual literalism in general is a particularly American phenomenon. American religion is intensely Protestant in the sense that it derives everything from Biblical sources as opposed to many other religions which have popes, imams and gurus from which authoritative wisdom may be derived.

Similarly the US takes a kind of literalist view of its Constitution where many legal decisions are in fact textual analyses trying to extract the "original intention". It is interesting that the Magna Carta, for example, plays a far more important role in American history than it does in British history!

I shouldn't do this, but I will anyway

[Spamalamadingdong]

Heh, ask these questions, and you'll get uncomfortable feet-shuffling and red faces. Be prepared to be called a "zealot."

You mean "God shuffled his feet..." - Crash Test Dummies. His apologists do no better. And now I will address every one of the points you illustrated, mostly with knowledge gleaned from layman's publications and discussions on Usenet and the Web; you can see talkorigins.org for more comprehensive treatments.

1) Where are all of the transitional fossils?

It depends what you mean by "all". There are many organisms which probably never fossilized, or their fossils were in sedimentary rocks which have since eroded and been destroyed. We've only dug up a small fraction of the remainder, so we don't have "all of them" and never will.

However, the phrase "all of the transitional fossils" is usually used (dishonestly) by creationsts to claim that no such fossils exist. Of course, every time paleontologists find a transitional species between two other known species, this leaves two transitions to be filled instead of one... The fact that we have evidence of thousands and thousands of intermediate species, and that DNA evidence of living species backs up the morphological family tree to a degree which would be impossible save for common descent, is ironclad evidence that life on Earth evolved and continues to evolve.

2) How can you explain the presence of young comets in a solar system that is supposed to be "billions" of years old?

Comets which orbit in the Kuiper belt or further out remain "young" as long as they stay there. Until some gravitational perturbation changes their orbit to come close to a planet which slings their paths into the inner solar system, they never get "old". So yes, some comets we see could be billions of years old and still making their first passes near the Sun; this is why astronomers study them for evidence of the conditions prevailing in the early Solar System (and these astronomers are not creationists).

3) What caused the Big Bang?

We don't know yet. Science is never ashamed to admit lack of an answer where evidence is not available. Creationists have a disorder known in other contexts as Male Answer Syndrome and are unable to humble themselves to that point.

4) How do you explain the relative thinness of the layer of dust on the Moon? It should be much deeper if the Moon is billions of years old.

Dust is one thing, regolith is another. Solid rock on the Moon's surface is a rarity; most of it is material which has been bombarded and shattered dozens or thousands of times (look up "microbreccias" for an idea of what this produces). However, the surface of the Moon is in hard vacuum, and loose dust vacuum-welds together to form a more cohesive surface. It still has lots of open space and insulates extremely well, though; the Apollo heat-flow experiments had to sit for longer than their design lifetime for the heat of drilling to dissipate so that they could actually measure heat flow!

5) How do you reconcile the perfection of Scripture with the hoaxes and embarrassments of science (i.e., Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Lucy, etc.)

Funny you should mention that. Genesis has two distinct and contradictory creation stories, which religion has done a very poor job of even admitting, much less criticizing and correcting. As previously mentioned, the errors and hoaxes of science were found and corrected by scientists.

6) How do you counter the charge that modern Information Theory (IT) renders evolution all but impossible?

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is."

There's a pretty good rebuttal of the IT claim in the Feb. 2001 post of the month. Or perhaps you should just walk your way through some of these Google search results; you might learn something if your mind is open to it.

Re:[HI TROLL] Questions evolutionists want to answ

[raduga]

1) Where are all of the transitional fossils?

fossils are evolutionary snapshots. Its like trying to reconstruct the events of football game, from a few still photos taken at random throughout the play. Fossils are rare, because most environmental processes destroy rather than preserve biological materials. As time goes on, we gradually pick up more pieces, and more snapshots, but most creatures who have ever lived never left any fossils. This neither proves nor disproves evolution, its a complication that makes paleontology difficult.

2) How can you explain the presence of young comets in a solar system that is supposed to be "billions" of years old? (Of course, if the SS is only a few thousand years old, comets are easy to explain.)

That's really a question for an astrophysicist. But, many "young" comets are tugged into the inner solar system from the Oort cloud, where presumably they have been orbiting unchanged and virtually untouched for billions of years, in an almost perfect primordial state. When planetary motion pulls them in, and they become short period comets, they have a "new" appearance, because they still have all their old cometary material.

3) What caused the Big Bang? What happened in the first 10E-38th of a second after the Big Bang happened?

Another astrophysics question, (well, two) that is still largely resolved at present. Its outside the domain of evolutionary biology, and is largely not applicable to events happening many many seconds later. (You'll grant that our world is more than 6000 seconds old, will you?) Its possibly relevant whether or not the universe was Created, but that does not prove or disprove evolution.

4) How do you explain the relative thinness of the layer of dust on the Moon? It should be much deeper if the Moon is billions of years old.

Where does dust come from? On Earth (and on Mars; places we've actually been to) it appears to be largely the work of weathering processes, wind, water, chemical and gravitational sundering. There is a lot of dust on Earth, and Mars; much of it layered and pressed into sediment. With scarcely any weathering processes on the Moon, its not surprising that little dust has accumulated. Lunar dust, or regolith, is sundered by mechanical abrasion from meteorite strikes, the vast majority of which haven't happened in a long time, so there is little dust, and what's there is pretty jagged and abrasive.

5) How do you reconcile the perfection of Scripture with the hoaxes and embarrassments of science (i.e., Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Lucy, etc.)

This is primarily a religious question, and not implicated in evolutionary biology, because science as a whole does not address questions of perfection. There is no perfect theory, or absolutely right answer, and therefore no way to reconcile perfection with non-perfection within scientific modelling. Additionally, there are many divergent views of what constitutes the Truth, in the biblical scriptures, even; as many who call themselves Christian, Jewish, or Moslem disagree with eachother. (Each hold a portition of those Scriptures to be True) You may be correct, and the rest of us wallowing in sin, but its outside the realm of things that evolutionary theory addresses, so we can't help you.
Do scientists make mistakes? Ha ha! Its what we do best :)

6) How do you counter the charge that modern Information Theory (IT) renders evolution all but impossible?

I don't counter it. Genetic engineering may well supercede natural selection, because we can select precisely genomic features that would otherwise take a very long time to be expressed. We may not know, for some time yet, whether natural selection is over, on Earth, but it is entirely possible, from what little we now know. The presence of an Intelligent Architect, certainly has the possibility of mucking up the whole works. If we can architect ourselves, this might be the end of evolution as we've known it, and we may need new theories to describe future differentiation and radiation of species, post-genetic-revolution. Before there were creatures on earth doing genegeneering, evolution would have remained in effect.

I welcome your questions, and am glad you keep asking (and keep trolling!) If we evolutionists don't keep on our toes, the silurians will get us.

Misunderstanding Behe

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read Behe again you will notice that he accepts evolution, and accepts as generally accurate our understanding of the last few hundred million years of it.

Furthermore if you look closely you will find that a critically important thing to do in molecular biology is to look for genetic sequences that don't change across related species. The reason being that the genes that don't change much are the ones where when you tinker, Bad Stuff happens. And those are the genes that do Something Important. (After that you have to figure out what they do that is important...)

In other words this basic technique won't even make sense unless you first accept that Darwinian evolution has happened.

Re:Misunderstanding Behe

[ianscot]

Yeah, your basic fundie doesn't have the time to read those opening chapters of Behe, in which he concedes macroevolution in all its guises, for humans too, and tries to narrow the argument to the subcellular structures and processes he thinks he can make sound suitably complex to a lay reader.

Not that Michael Behe's publishing his grand ideas in peer review journals like a real scientist, mind you, but he's still miles more credible than a whole lot of the yahoos who love "Black Box." Sometimes it doesn't seem like they've even read it.

Re: Misunderstanding Behe

[Black Parrot]

> Yeah, your basic fundie doesn't have the time to read those opening chapters of Behe, in which he concedes macroevolution in all its guises, for humans too...

> ...a whole lot of the yahoos who love "Black Box." Sometimes it doesn't seem like they've even read it.

For this you have to understand something deeply ingrained in the Fundamentalist mentality. Basically, it's a desire to "find an expert that supports my position". It doesn't matter how badly the expert's point is taken out of context, let alone how many other experts disagree entirely; it's sufficient to find any support, and throw away the rest as chaff.

The reason I say that this is deeply ingrained in the Fundamentalist mentality is that it doesn't just apply to evolution bashing. They use exactly the same methodology when quote-mining the bible to "prove" that their sect is correct and the rival sect meeting two blocks down the street is wrong.

I was taken to a fundie church three times a week as a kid, and about 95% of what I heard from the pulpit was exactly this style of super-shallow rhetoric that serves no purpose other than to draw a line in the sand separating "us" from "them", and to give the members of "us" a jukebox mantra to recite whenever their beliefs were challenged. It's about as intellectually bankrupt as rhetoric can get, but it's not intended to promote understanding of {the bible, nature} - it's purpose is purely sociological. And it works for lots of people, as you may have noticed.

Re:Misunderstanding Behe

[young-earth]

I've read Behe, book and followup papers, and I don't see where you derive the claim that he

concedes macroevolution in all its guises

Yet I'm one of those "fundies" you're ranting about. I have a degree in organic chemistry with biochemistry from an ivy league school, so I'm not what you labelled "a lay reader". And like many folks much brighter than I, I'm a creationist.

Behe is by training a biochemist - so he does not have (nor does he claim) any expertise in the fields of biology that touch on "descent" within, for example, vertebrates. He wrote a book about his area of expertise, showing that evolution (in his expert opinion in his field of research) could not possibly explain molecular machines or the origin of the cell. He concedes that he lacks the expertise to fully judge other areas of biology.

In my reading of his book, he does not say "Darwin was right", which seems to be what you're claiming he wrote. I have his book inches from me right now; I'll concede your point if you can provide page and paragraph numbers proving your point.

If you're attacking Behe for not publishing in refereed journals, then answer why Darwin also wrote a book instead of publishing in a journal. If that is your criterion for rejecting a position, then why apply your negativity only to one of them?

Savor the Irony

[Mulletproof]

Interesting how the face you're using for this story's icon was a God fearing man. Not to spark any religion vs. evolution debates, just an interesting choice for the mascot of this article ^__^

Re:Savor the Irony

[RatBastard]

How is this ironic? Is it impossible for a person to Beleive and accept science at the same time? Must a person's mind be so confined and small as to be able to contain both world views? Can a man (wor woman) not beleive in God and seek to understand the means by which His creation works?

Faith did not create the computer on your desk. Only the advancement of scientific principals not even addressed in the Bible lead to it's creation. Does the existance of that computer invalidate the existance of God?

Here's a free clue: most scientists are religious people.

Re:Savor the Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

He was also a scientist. Of course maybe it's overly broad to use a physicist as a symbol for science.

To the best of anyone's knowledge that I've heard, Einstein never questioned evolutionary theory, which was already well-established during his lifetime.

Islamic creationism?

[Tablizer]

What about the Islamic world? They are known for for their rather "traditional" beliefs.

Re:Islamic creationism?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not aware of any "first world" Islamic countries. In fact, I'd say it's very difficult for a country to achieve "first world" status and still be described in religious terms.

So-Called "Science"

[Philip Trent]

I just wish someone would realize the harm that is being done to the moral fabric of our country by these so-called scientists and their so-called "theory" of Electricity. All the "evidence" for Electricity is shaky, unproven and nonsensical. They even go so far as to invent a particle they call an "electron," which the Electricianists themselves admit can never be seen! How gullible do they think we are? All decent people know that lightning is the divine wrath of Jupiter Fulminator -- and that's something those Electrianists are going to find out for themselves real soon!

How odd that this book even exists

[mblase]

To some extent it covers the same territory as Peter Bowler's "Evolution: the history of an idea", but its focus is narrower in time while providing more in-depth discussion of the philosophical and religious ideas of Darwin's contemporaries."

There's something interesting in the way evolution continually focuses on itself. In defending itself against creationism, evolution touts itself as objective science, rational answers, the generally accepted truth of the scientific community. And yet, I don't see books with titles like "Continental Drift: The Evolution of an Idea" or "The Big Bang: Collecting the Evidence" getting written, let alone reviewed.

There's something about evolution, and the debate around it, that invites what I've come to think of as scientific elitism. If it were a SCIENTIFIC THEORY that COULDN'T BE ARGUED based on the AVAILABLE EVIDENCE, then that would be that. The Big Bang and continental drift don't get all this attention, but evolution does. Is it because those theories are more rigid, that there's less debate over the nuances of how they happened, than genetic evolution? Or is it because scientific minds genuinely like to push fundamentalists' hot buttons?

Maybe this is just an American phenomenon; maybe other countries are more at ease with the scientific theory of evolution and the whens and hows of it all. I just find it odd that for a theory that claims to have so much science backing it up, it needs to keep reminding everyone of its validity. One begins to wonder if the scientists doth protest too much.

Re:How odd that this book even exists

[Ami Ganguli]

I suspect it's because the history of evolution has an interesting plot. There's a compelling story to be told.

This isn't unique. The development of the transistor was an event of imense importance, but you see far more being written about the Enigma machine. Was the Enigma machine more important? No, just sexier.

Re:How odd that this book even exists

[dhogaza]

One begins to wonder if the scientists doth protest too much.

Not at all. The battleground isn't science, it is the science classroom in tax-funded schools in the United States.

"Creation Science" was invented to get the story of Creation as told in the Bible into our public schools. It can't be taught as religon due to Supreme Court rulings that hold that the doctrine of separation of Church and State in the Constitution prevent it in tax-funded schools (you can do what you want in private schools).

Thus "Creation Science". The argument is that, as a "real" science, the doctrine of separation of Church and State does not apply. On the heels of this follows the argument that evolutionary science is "junk science" and should be replaced by so-called "Creation Science", or that the latter should at least be given equal footing. Not simply in schools, but in the science classroom, i.e. the Biblical Creation story should be taught as science .

See ... because it's not really religion but science.

If a similar movement were to arise in opposition to theories in modern physics you'd see the same sort of reaction among scientists as you do today with evolution vs. so-called Creation Science.

Re:How odd that this book even exists

[bluemug]

Evolution touches and frightens us at the most basic level because it claims to define who and what we are. It's more tangible than continental drift or the big bang, as anyone who's watched apes in a zoo can attest.

Re:How odd that this book even exists

[RatBastard]

It also threatens many people's belief in being special in the eyes of God. If we are but the current product of a natural system of change, and not made in the image of God, they postulate, we are nothing. We matter not. Our existance has no meaning. There is no Heaven and death is forever.

That series of ideas scares the shit out of them. That's why they fight so hard. To them evolution is a threat to their immortal souls and thei place in the Hands of God.

Re:How odd that this book even exists

[foofboy]

How about this?

There are a number of documents discussing the pros and cons of the Big Bang, although I don't know if there are any serious alternative theories.

I think the real answer to your question is that Evolution, as has been correctly pointed out by both proponents and opponents, undermines the idea that the universe was created for the sake of man. In that regard, it's extremely contentious, and I believe this is the only reason why Evolution is considered "controversial" by anyone. Certainly, there's no doubt in scientific circles of the truth of the theory. The fundamentalists are edgy and on the warpath because the advance of empirical science has significantly undermined their authority. I think evolution is an important symbolic battle for them. Although it is a little disingenuous that they are really only agitating for their own version of the creation myth. I mean, what about the Hindus, or the Native Americans?

However, if you really are curious, the history of the tectonic plate theory is pretty fascinating. It was considered as kooky as the search for E.T. for a while.

Re: How odd that this book even exists

[Black Parrot]

> Maybe this is just an American phenomenon; maybe other countries are more at ease with the scientific theory of evolution and the whens and hows of it all.

AFAICT, most countries don't have quite the curious patchwork of fundamentalist sects that the USA has, and don't have to deal with the political clout the members of those sects flourish when stirred up by their leadership.

> I just find it odd that for a theory that claims to have so much science backing it up, it needs to keep reminding everyone of its validity. One begins to wonder if the scientists doth protest too much.

No, the curious thing is how much money goes into the evolution-denial movement and how much hot air comes out, compared to the level of denial associated with any other branch of science. You're seeing something and projecting it as a problem with science, whereas in fact it is merely a curious sociological phenomenon. (In the abstract it's a really interesting sociological phenomenon, but unfortunately I have to think of it as a concrete problem rather than as as an abstract phenomenon, since creationists are wielding so much money and political clout in an effort to disrupt or destroy scientific research and science education in the USA.)

Re:How odd that this book even exists

[Anonymous Coward]

> In defending itself against creationism,

Actually there is only the one narrow 'creationist' cult that is attacking evolution. None of the many other creationist myths followers have any issues with evolution.

The tiny but very active "creationist science [sic]" followers seem to take exception to the explanation of evolution primarily because they take the fictious view that '[our] god gave us this land and dominion over the animals (and Indians and Pallestinians, etc)' while evolution tells us that we are just sometimes intelligent animals and your great...grandfather was a monkey and thus, given 'in his image', so was your 'god'.

> I don't see books with titles like "Continental Drift: The Evolution of an Idea" or "The Big Bang: Collecting the Evidence" getting written, let alone reviewed.

While it may be that you don't see them, they do abound. The one that I like is "The Dark Side of the Earth" by R M Wood. It covers the origins and arguments over geology, including a section on continental drift from the first evidence gathered around 1830s to the arguments in the late 40s and 50s to the final acceptance in the 60s, and thense to plate tectonics.

The various explanations and theories were products of their time, the arguments paralleled those of evolution.

> Or is it because scientific minds genuinely like to push fundamentalists' hot buttons?

Of course the conclusion that the Atlantic is getting wider doesn't imply 'your god is a monkey', so it has had fewer attacks from american cults.

> I just find it odd that for a theory that claims to have so much science backing it up

Geology and plate tectonics were argued about in the 50s and 60s, and resolved. In fact as much was published about this, and about side issues such as Velikovsky, at the time as is now published about evolution.

This is primarily because it is only now that sufficient detailed evidence of the genetic mechanisms is available.

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

This already came up and was refuted.

Two Points

[Tyrone Slothrop]

1. I picked up Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution and I can assure anyone interested in the topic that it is, as Danny's review says, clear and detailed. Even more important, it is in fact an exciting read, assuming you like to read science.

2. The evolution/creation debate is really about competing moralities, not competing scientific paradigms. Don't waste your time responding to "christian scientific arguments" as they are not mainstream christian, remotely scientific, or even arguments. They exist merely to advance a rather dotty extremist social agenda. Rather, insist that the propagaters of such stuff come clean about the kind of society they are pushing. I'm sure that most Americans would not like to live like that.

Re:Two Points

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm sure that most Americans would not like to live like that.

Actually I am sure that most Americans _would_ like to live in a complete fantasy world where there is a paternal overseer that guantees that 'good guys always win' (as long as good guys=white anglo-saxon) and 'evildoers are punished' and magic works.

In fact most seem to believe that they do. Pity it is reality.

Re:Wrong darwin, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Thay are also skirting Darwin.

HOLY SHIT YOU'RE RIGHT!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG, I'd better convert to biomass or something, just alike all of Europe has done. Fucking twat.

FYI: Hebrew used for "day"

[Jayson]

From Strong's Hebrew Bible Dictionary:

03117 yowm yome from an unused root meaning to be hot; a day (as the warm hours), whether literal (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next), or figurative (a space of time defined by an associated term), (often used adverb):--age, + always, + chronicals, continually(-ance), daily, ((birth-), each, to) day, (now a, two) days (agone), + elder, X end, + evening, + (for) ever(-lasting, -more), X full, life, as (so) long as (... live), (even) now, + old, + outlived, + perpetually, presently, + remaineth, X required, season, X since, space, then, (process of) time, + as at other times, + in trouble, weather, (as) when, (a, the, within a) while (that), X whole (+ age), (full) year(-ly), + younger.

Then please apply Timothy 2:15 to yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

Study talk.origins, go through the various FAQs, articles, and past discussions there, and prepare yourself with answers to the questions presented.

Remember to try to really understand the full context of the discussions because you will not have accomplished what Peter 3:15 tells you to do if your answers are shallow and you are unable to handle obvious follow-ups, leaving your listeners dissatisfied.

contrast

[rodentia]

Contrast this balanced review of a fine and nuanced history of an idea with this screed. I can't bring myself to get excited about this retarded debate any longer. We should respond to the Creationist with some patronizing smiles. Treat the Cobb Cty School Board to an awkward, embarrassed silence.

It is not as though the alternative is a poison. If the young minds of Cobb Cty can't be moved from their faulty instruction and misapprehensions by subsequent study, their convictions can be classed as theological and impervious to reason. And politely ignored by reasonable society.

no "zealot" option

[V_drive]

maybe slashdot *should* have a zealot option, but it doesn't. so, be prepared for "troll," "flamebait," or (if you're lucky) "offtopic."

i find the evidence of evolution to be highly suspect, and there is a fair amount of evidence against it. i would encourage you to well research your claims and cite objective sources. creationism is considered a joke because people don't typically do that. i've tried to research the subject matter, but find no objective and reliable source to verify many creationist claims.

honestly, imo, it's a topic where a lot of people need to cool down and re-evaluate their assumptions.

Back to basics... Related Book: Darwin's Ghost

[bluemug]

Darwin's Ghost
Steve Jones
Anchor Canada (US publisher?)
ISBN: 0-385-63867-2

Ever wonder what Darwin's ideas really were, before they were spun by philosophers/economists/clergy/you/me/everyone?

Darwin's Ghost is an entertaining rewrite/commentary on "On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." (full title) It pays homage to Darwin's original ideas and includes passages from the 1859 version of The Origin. Jones follows The Origin chapter by chapter, commenting on the critical points and supplementing the ideas with reports from modern events and research.

So make your own philosophy right at home! It's fun and easy! Seriously folks, the book is a delightful read if you want to find out what evolution is really about, without all the hooey.

The real reason for holding these debates

[Pac]

The reason is just to ridicule the creationists for the benefit of the sector of the public that matters.

We hold no hope for the hard entrenched "card-carrying" anti-science ones, but there is a huge young audience whose upbringing may have favoured a distorted, supersticious, view of science. These can be saved from their ignorance and their children may have hope for a better education, away from the pathetic 6000 years old Earth crowd.

The TYPUS in Organic Nature

[johnrpenner]

i've always felt it is better to go back to the ORIGINAL documents
than to read commentary ABOUT them. in addition to Darwin, there was
also Haeckel, Kant, and Steiner -- who were certainly some of darwin's
most significant fellow researchers in the area. here's a experpted chapter from
one of Darwins contemporaries circa 1886:

The TYPUS in Organic Nature

Above all, one has committed a serious error in this. One believed that the method of inorganic science should simply be taken over into the realm of organisms. One considered the method employed here to be altogether the only scientific one, and thought that for "organics" to be scientifically possible, it would have to be so in exactly the same sense in which physics is, for example. The possibility was forgotten, however, that perhaps the concept of what is scientific is much broader than "the explanation of the world according to the laws of the physical world." Even today one has not yet penetrated through to this knowledge. Instead of investigating what it is that makes the approach of the inorganic sciences scientific, and of then seeing a method that can be applied to the world of living things while adhering to the requirements that result from this investigation, one simply declared that the laws gained upon this lower stage of existence are universal.

Above all, however, one should investigate what the basis is for any scientific thinking. We have done this in our study. In the preceding chapter we have also recognized that inorganic lawfulness is not the only one in existence but is only a special case of all possible lawfulness in general. The method of physics is simply one particular case of a general scientific way of investigation in which the nature of the pertinent objects and the region this science serves are taken into consideration. If this method is extended into the organic, one obliterates the specific nature of the organic. Instead of investigating the organic in accordance with its nature, one forces upon it a lawfulness alien to it. In this way, however, by denying the organic, one will never come to know it. Such scientific conduct simply repeats, upon a higher level, what it has gained upon a lower one; and although it believes that it is bringing the higher form of existence under laws established elsewhere, this form slips away from it in its efforts, -because such scientific conduct does not know how to grasp and deal with this form in its particular nature.

All this comes from the erroneous view that the method of a science is extraneous to its objects of study, that it is not determined by these objects but rather by our own nature. It is believed that one must think in a particular way about objects, that one must indeed think about all objects -- throughout the entire universe -- in the same way. Investigations are undertaken that are supposed to show that, due to the nature of our spirit, we can think only inductively or deductively, etc.

In doing so, however, one overlooks the fact that the objects perhaps will not tolerate the way of looking at them that we want to apply to them.

A look at the views of Haeckel, who is certainly the most significant of the natural-scientific theoreticians of the present day, shows us that the objection we are making to the organic natural science of our day is entirely justified: namely, that it does not carry over into organic nature the principle of scientific contemplation in the absolute sense, but only the principle of inorganic nature.

When he demands of all scientific striving that "the causal interconnections of phenomena become recognized everywhere," when he says that "if psychic mechanics were not so infinitely complex, if we were also able to have a complete overview of the historical development of psychic functions, we would then be able to bring them all into a mathematical soul formula," then one can see clearly from this what he wants: to treat the whole world according to the stereotype of the method of the physical sciences.

This demand, however, does not underlie Darwinism in its original form but only in its present-day interpretation. We have seen that to explain a process in inorganic nature means to show its lawful emergence out of other sense-perceptible realities, to trace it back to objects that, like itself, belong to the sense world. But how does modern organic science employ the principles of adaptation and the struggle for existence (both of which we certainly do not doubt are the expression of facts)? It is believed that one can trace the character of a particular species directly back to the outer conditions in which it lived, in somewhat the same way as the heating of an object is traced back to the rays of the sun falling upon it. One forgets completely that one can never show a species' character, with all its qualities that are full of content, to be the result of these conditions. The conditions may have a determining influence, but they are not a creating cause. We can definitely say that under the influence of certain circumstances a species had to evolve in such a way that one or another organ became particularly developed; what is there as content, however, the specifically organic, cannot be derived from outer conditions. Let us say that an organic entity has the essential characteristics a b c; then, under the influence of certain outer conditions, it has evolved. Through this, its characteristics have taken on the particular form a'b'c'. When we take these influences into account we will then understand that a has evolved into the form of a', b into b', c into c'. But the specific nature of a, b, and c can never arise as the outcome of external conditions.

One must, above all, focus one's thinking on the question: From what do we then derive the content of that general "something" of which we consider the individual organic entity to be a specialized case? We know very well that the specialization comes from external influences. But we must trace the specialized shape itself back to an inner principle. We gain enlightenment as to why just this particular form has evolved when we study a being's environment. But this particular form is, after all, something in and of itself; we see that it possesses certain characteristics. We see what is essential. A content, configurated in itself, confronts the outer phenomenal world, and this content provides us with what we need in tracing those characteristics back to their source. In inorganic nature we perceive a fact and see, in order to explain it, a second, a third fact and so on; and the result is that the first fact appears to us to be the necessary consequence of the other ones. In the organic world this is not so. There, in addition to the facts, we need yet another factor. We must see what works in from outer circumstances as confronted by something that does not passively allow itself to be determined by them but rather determines itself, actively, out of itself, under the influence of the outer circumstances.

But what is that basic factor? It can, after all, be nothing other than what manifests in the particular in the form of the general. In the particular, however, a definite organism always manifests. That basic factor is therefore an organism in the form of the general: a general image of the organism, which comprises within itself all the particular forms of organisms.

Following Goethe's example, let us call this general organism typus. Whatever the word typus might mean etymologically, we are using it in this Goethean sense and never mean anything else by it than what we have indicated. This typus is not developed in all its completeness in any single organism. Only our thinking, in accordance with reason, is able to take possession of it, by drawing it forth, as a general image, from phenomena. The typus is therewith the idea of the organism: the animalness in the animal, the general plant in the specific one.

One should not picture this typus as anything rigid. It has nothing at all to do with what Agassiz, Darwin's most significant opponent, called "an incarnate creative thought of God's." The typus is something altogether fluid, from which all the particular species and genera, which one can regard as subtypes or specialized types, can be derived. The typus does not preclude the theory of evolution. It does not contradict the fact that organic forms evolve out of one another. It is only reason's protest against the view that organic development consists purely in sequential, factual (sense-perceptible) forms. It is what underlies this whole development. It is what establishes the interconnection in all this endless manifoldness. It is the inner aspect of what we experience as the outer forms of living things. The Darwinian theory presupposes the typus.

The typus is the true archetypal organism; according to how it specializes ideally, it is either archetypal plant or archetypal animal. It cannot be any one, sense-perceptibly real living being. What Haeckel or other naturalists regard as the archetypal form is already a particular shape; it is, in fact, the simplest shape of the typus. The fact that in time the typus arises in its simplest form first does not require the forms arising later to be the result of those preceding them in time. AR forms result as a consequence of the typus; the first as well as the last are manifestations of it. We must take it as the basis of a true organic science and not simply undertake to derive the individual animal and plant species out of one another. The typus runs like a red thread through all the developmental stages of the organic world. We must hold onto it and then with it travel through this great realm of many forms. Then this realm will become understandable to us. Otherwise it falls apart for us, just as the rest of the world of experience does, into an unconnected mass of particulars. In fact, even when we believe that we are leading what is later, more complicated, more compound, back to a previous simpler form and that in the latter we have something original, even then we are deceiving ourselves, for we have only derived a specific form from a specific form.

Friedrich Theodor Vischer once said of the Darwinian theory that it necessitates a revision of our concept of time. We have now arrived at a point that makes evident to us in what sense such a revision would have to occur. It would have to show that deriving something later out of something earlier is no explanation, that what is first in time is not first in principle. All deriving has to do with principles, and at best it could be shown which factors were at work such that one species of beings evolved before another one in time.

The typus plays the same role in the organic world as natural law does in the inorganic. Just as natural law provides us with the possibility of recognizing each individual occurrence as a part of one great whole, so the typus puts us in a position to regard the individual organism as a particular form of the archetypal form.

http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA002/English/GA0 02_index.html

--

best regards,

john

Re: Einstein on Religion

[johnrpenner]

if you want an essay written by EINSTEIN HIMSELF on his religious views, try here:

Einstein on Cosmic Religious Feeling

"In my view, it is the most important function
of art and science to awaken this [cosmic religious] feeling
and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
(Albert Einstein)

Let's go to an evangelical Christian web site...

[fmaxwell]

Once we are there, we can start inflaming the people that belong there by telling them that creationism is wrong, not a scientific "theory", and that it's just religious superstition. It only seems fair since the vast majority of people on Slashdot believe in science and yet we are hounded by a handful of religious zealots every time there is a story that deals with the science of evolution. My advice to those people: If you want to revel in your blind faith belief in creationism, go to a web site aimed at people that eschew science in favor of the comforting lies of Christianity.

Before replying, consider that a "theory" is not some wild-assed notion that someone pulled out of their *ss. It's not conjecture or wild speculation.

Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term THEORY is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain HOW life evolves... it is important to understand that the current questions about how life evolves in no way implies any disagreement over the fact of evolution.

- Neil A. Campbell, Biology 2nd ed., 1990, Benjamin/Cummings, p.434

Darwin on The EYE

[johnrpenner]

'...to suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
and chromatic aberration could have been formed by natural
selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.'

(CHARLES DARWIN, Origin of the Species)

Re:Darwin on The EYE

[Anonymous Coward]

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.

Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound."

Out of context quotes make baby jesus cry.

Re:Darwin on The EYE

[johnrpenner]

> I may remark that several facts make me suspect that
> any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light

'the eye is created by the light, for the light' (goethe)

Re:Darwin on The EYE

[Anonymous Coward]

That quote is misleading if you don't read what he writes after that; he finds ways that an eye could indeed evolve incrementally.

BTW: Have you been reading Dilbert lately?

Re:Darwin on The EYE

[Yunzil]

And the rest of the paragraph reads:

"When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei ["the voice of the people = the voice of God "], as every philosopher
knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certain the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, should not be considered as subversive of the theory."

South America

[Pac]

Your facts are somewhat out of synch with reality.

In Brazil the Catholic schools have been teaching Evolution as a scientific fact for a long time. One detail easily overlooked is that the Catholic Church never favoured the literal interpretation of the Bible - sometimes they even considered certain literal interpretation sins.

I never seem any creationinst around here. They must exist somewhere, but they are probably hidden in their churches talking among themselves.

Re:South America

[Anonymous Coward]

The Roman Catholic church has indeed never believed in an accurate interpretation of the bible; otherwise they'd have to deal with the fact that Revelation 17 makes it quite clear that the "whore of Babylon" is centered on the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholics have always accepted any other religion except bible-believing Christians. It was true in the inquisition (when they killed anyone they found reading the Bible) and it's true today.

PS I'm a creationist, we're just all modded down due to intolerance by the moderators on /.

Troll on over to Google and ask your questions

[ianscot]

Answers to all your questions are available from Google, of course, in many flavors -- not that you tried. This was just a troll, but #1 on your list is such a lovely, tried-and-true ridiculousness that it just has to get the obvious response:

Where are all of the transitional fossils?

What, you mean all the fossils that actually prompted people to think about all this to start with? The ones people were discovering in the 19th century that caused people like Darwin to wonder, "Hey, the fossil record in South America includes these giant forms of what appear to be relatives of modern animals? What gives?" Those fossils? Go look at the history of evolutionary thought -- this book we're talking about might be a good starting point -- and watch how, as people try to explain the fossils they're finding, they eventually arrive at more and more coherent ideas about how evolution works. It's not like they started up bashing your "perfect" scripture out of a wrongheaded desire to make trouble, and then couldn't find any evidence; they started with the evidence you're saying is absent, and it pushed them, against their wills in a lot of different ways, toward the conclusion that scripture-based world views just didn't explain things. Darwin was trained as a priest in the Anglican church, and he really struggled with his ideas, but trying to explain the physical evidence pushed him along.

You've got it exactly backward, both historically and in terms of how you'd like to argue.

heh

[Mulletproof]

2think.org? If I didn't know any better, I'd swear they were trying to prove he was...

Why Six Day Creation is Important

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some people/Christians that may question why the issue of creation vs. evolution is important since that is not the focus of the Bible/Christianity.

But there are many Christians who believe that this is an important issue and that it is important to believe in a six-day creation. Why? Because once one part of the Bible is dismissed as not being straight fact, what other parts of the Bible are also not straight fact?

The creation account of the Bible seems to imply a literal six days, but many people would say that the term day can be interpreted/translated as "period of time". I'm not going to go down that road (it's been travelled enough), but even if the term day does denote a "period of time", there is still a problem with the order as it is written in Genesis. On the third day of creation grass and trees were created, but it wasn't until the fourth day of creation that the sun and moon were created. That obviously does not agree with evolution theory.

Supposedly it was this creation vs. evolution issue that was the springboard (or at least one of them) that drove Charles Templeton (who once preached with Billy Graham) to turn his back on Christianity. Thus it is important for the Christian to believe in a six-day creation and not compromise on the Word of God. It's an issue of a firm foundation.

Personal Note: I am a Christian that used to believe in "theistic evolution". I came across other Christians who, to my surprise, actually believed in a literal six-day creation despite all of the evidence that I grew up hearing about. They encouraged me to research the topic myself and then decide. So I did, and after looking at the evidence I now believe in a literal six-day creation.

Re:Why Six Day Creation is Important

[ShavenYak]

Because once one part of the Bible is dismissed as not being straight fact, what other parts of the Bible are also not straight fact?

The entire book of Job is an allegory, to name one. Why would you think God didn't use myths to express Himself in the Old Testament, when parables were His main lesson style in His human form as Jesus?

They encouraged me to research the topic myself and then decide. So I did, and after looking at the evidence I now believe in a literal six-day creation.

What evidence, other than the Bible itself, shows that creation took six days? By that I mean evidence that shows that the period of time between the first light on Earth (day 1, let there be light) and humans (day 6, let us create man in our image) was 120 hours or thereabouts. It must have been pretty substantial to change your beliefs like that.

I'm not really expecting an answer, but if you feel like it, keep in mind that I'm not even worried about when creation happened - 6,000 or 6 billion years ago, I could care less. I want to hear about the evidence that made you believe it only took six days.

Of course, I just realized I'm replying to an AC, so you might not even know I've asked. I don't think that's what Jesus intended when He asked you to preach the Good News to all nations!

The creationist contribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we getting the usual barrage of lies and stupidities from the pathetic creationists yet?

Re: Einstein on Religion

[Lemmy Caution]

1. As noted above, Einsteins "religiosity" was far more about aesthetic sensibility than about doctrine. He is talking about a feeling of wonder, not about belief.

2. More to the point, my link and data is about belief in Biblical accounts of cration, not on religious affiliation or sensibilities. Many scientists have some religious affiliation (I know a number of Buddhist-affiliated cognitive scientists) - that's a far, far cry from questioning scientific theories on the basis of religious doctrine.

A suggestion for the unbelievers

[Pac]

I suggest you study carrefully the list of Arguments for the existence of God. Specially on-topic for the present discussion are arguments 10, 26 and 120:
10. ARGUMENT FROM CREATION
(1) If evolution is false, then creationism is true, and therefore God
exists.
(2) Evolution can't be true, since I lack the mental capacity to
understand it; moreover, to accept its truth would cause me to be
uncomfortable
(3) Therefore, God exists.

26. ARGUMENT FROM AMERICAN EVANGELISM
(1) Telling people that God exists makes me filthy rich.
(2) Therefore, God exists.

120. ARGUMENT FROM PERSECUTION (II) / ARGUMENT FROM IDIOCY (I)
1) Jesus said that people would make fun of Christians.
2) I am an idiot.
3) People often point that out.
4) Therefore, God exists.

Re:A suggestion for the unbelievers

[anakog]

He-he. Thanks!

Both funny and educational. Too bad I don't teach logic...

It's futile...

[lucasw]

Here's hundreds of comments debating creationism vs. evolution, all redundant and offtopic.

Has there ever been an evolution book review on slashdot that resulted in any significant discussion of the book in question?

Evolution and Irrelevance

[jensend]

The theory of evolution is almost entirely irrelevant to the fields of philosophy and theology. As Ludwig Wittgenstein said in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, "The Darwinian theory has no more to do with philosophy than has any other hypothesis of natural science."

Philosophy consists of epistemology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, and philosophy of language. It is difficult to see any applicability of the theory of evolution in any of these fields. The philosophical argument advanced in the review about the incompatibility of metaphysical idealism with evolution is rather strange. Adherents of the forms of Idealism attacked therein are likely to say that the argument suffers from equivocation. "Species as eternal Forms," I can hear such Idealists saying, "are not sets of animals which can interbreed and have fertile offspring."

The continual Slashdot derision of Creationism is based on a straw man and/or bandwagon argument and the fallacy of the excluded middle. "Creationists all believe the Universe is less than ten thousand years old and was created in exactly the manner described in Genesis; since this view is disproven, God did not create the Universe!" is the line generally taken here, and there should be no need for an explanation of why this is fallacious. Nor is there any serious threat from the people who say "My Google-based Rules/Sucks-o-meter says God did not create the Universe" or "Contemporary Europeans don't believe God created the Universe."

No adherent of any metaphysical or theological/anti-theological position need feel that the above is an argument against that position. I have here argued only against misapplying what I think is a solid scientific theory.

Re:Evolution and Irrelevance

[Black Parrot]

> The theory of evolution is almost entirely irrelevant to the fields of philosophy and theology.

Philosophy and theology aren't too damn important to the study of evolution either, you know.

Re:Evolution and Irrelevance

[Anonymous Coward]

> "Creationists all believe the Universe is less than ten thousand years old and was created in exactly the manner described in Genesis;

Actually this is not the case at all, quite the opposite. There are dozens, hundreds, of different, incompatible, creation beliefs, many, if not most, having nothing at all related to Genesis. Many predate the dating invented by Bishop Usher 'proving' that the world was already created by the time Genesis got around to trying it.

Of course each group of creationists completely ignore all the others insisting that they are either complete myths or just copies of 'our truth' but they got it wrong.

The idea that 'creationists' have one 'true' view of creation is a complete myth.

Re:Evolution and Irrelevance

[jensend]

Well, duh. The point is that the book being reviewed, the review itself, and the Slashdot discussion all focus largely (though not entirely) on evolution's percieved enormous impacts on philosophy and theology.

Please answer the38 questions....

[Anonymous Coward]

Please answer the 38 questions at this URL:

http://www.drdino.com/cse.asp?pg=articles&specif ic =3

Re:Please answer the38 questions....

[ianscot]

First please explain why this guy has a web site explaining how Apple Computer is in league with dark forces because of the "Darwin" underpinnings of OS X. The claims become much more bizarre, of course, but that's his starting point.

I'm dead serious. "Dr. Dino" is quite the fellah.

Re:Please answer the38 questions....

[Anonymous Coward]

You F*cking Troll! He has nothing about 'Apple' computer on his site.

Answer the 38 questions if you dare!

Re:Please answer the38 questions....

[ShavenYak]

It appears that you are correct, but I have seen a creationist web site that did make some allegations similar to what the original poster claimed.

My quick Google search for it has turned up only one link (http://members.truepath.com/objective/propaganda. html) that might be it but that link is broken now.

As for the 38 questions, I'll leave that for someone with more time to waste tilting at windmills.

Psalm 14:1

[stevet96]

Psalms 14:1
"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."

Re:Psalm 14:1

[Taldo]

Psalms 14:1 "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."

'The wise man says it aloud.'

Re:Psalm 14:1

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that certainly settles that!

Incidentally, didn't Jesus warn against calling people "fools" in the New Testament?

(I know, I know, you only follow the parts of the Bible that are convenient, but still ..)

Re:Psalm 14:1

[stevet96]

I don't believe that I have called or labelled any one as a fool. I was merely quoting scripture. Others felt compelled to quote from various books, so I quoted from the Bible.

Some other disagreeable details

[Pac]

"On the third day of creation grass and trees were created, but it wasn't until the fourth day of creation that the sun and moon were created. That obviously does not agree with evolution theory."

Funny that you care to argue how this contradicts evolution. Why do you choose to hide the real consequences? Because this little "fact" does not contradicts evolution directly, only all known biology upon which evolution rests. It contradicts every known fact about the physiology of plants. It contradict physics.

But thank you, you just demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt why your kind of Christian fanatic must be publicly exposed, debunked and fought at every possible forum. You are not just a danger to innocent Kansas children, you are a danger to civilization. Left to your own you would ban all known science and happily lead us to a dark age of ignorance and fear...

Re:Some other disagreeable details

[BCGlorfindel]

Actually if you care to read the Genesis account God creates light on the first day. If one presumes this 'light' simply didn't have a specific source until the sun and moon were created then plants can be created before the sun and moon. Please at least spend a few short minutes studying an opposing view before decrying them as evil fanatical zealots.

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
2 And the earth was waste and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
3 And God said, Let there be light. And there was light.
4 And God saw the light that it was good; and God divided between the light and the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning -- the first day.
6 And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it be a division between waters and waters.
7 And God made the expanse, and divided between the waters that are under the expanse and the waters that are above the expanse; and it was so.
8 And God called the expanse Heavens. And there was evening, and there was morning -- a second day.
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together to one place, and let the dry [land] appear. And it was so.
10 And God called the dry [land] Earth, and the gathering together of the waters he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
11 And God said, Let the earth cause grass to spring up, herb producing seed, fruit-trees yielding fruit after their kind, the seed of which is in them, on the earth. And it was so.

Re:Let's go to an evangelical Christian web site..

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to be scientific, get your facts straight. Not all evangelicals are Young Earth Creationists. The opinion among Christians since at least Augustine is that the processes of the world evolve (so Augustine beat Darwin by more than a millenium). Creationism is a blip in modern America, not a position that the Christian church has ever officially taken as a doctrine.

Stephen Jay Gould

[ucblockhead]

Stephen Jay Gould's last book, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory also goes into great detail on the history of evolutionary theories and the intellectual context in which Darwin worked.

It's a tough read, though, because Gould goes into excruciating detail about everything, and because it assumes a lot of knowledge in the field. Amazing book, though.

Evolution?...What about discussing the book

[SkipChaser]

I haven't read it but would like to know if it is worth reading.
So cut the criticism about evolution and tell me if the book fairly presents the agendas and beliefs of the people that postulated evolution.
A person's beliefs and agenda can greatly determine the person's life's work.
Does it answer why they seemed driven to eliminate God from the physical world?
Did their theories lead to political systems (Socialism, Communism, Facism, Nazism) and the harm they did?
Please talk about the evidence they cited when formulating their theories, was it flawed, false or unreliable?
I do have one question: the reviewer says "Also, by the 1860s more was known about the fossil record than had been known in 1844, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to doubt that progression had occurred during geological time. Darwin was therefore able to draw on a more ample arsenal of scientific facts; indeed, he had made significant contributions to that arsenal himself." Huh? I don't think we can assume alot was accomplished between 1844 and 1860. Maybe maybe not.
Communications was not like today.
Findings took years to get published in the 19th century. No internet, no phones, beginnings of telegraphy, crude photography, very slow transportation, wars and conflicts made scientific collaboration and validation a very hard and long process.
Please don't say the evidence doesn't matter, IT DOES SO MATTER. It is the basis of the scientific method.

Re:Evolution?...What about discussing the book

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think we can assume alot was accomplished between 1844 and 1860. Maybe maybe not.
Communications was not like today.

Ever hear of a little thing called the Industrial Revolution? Needed lots of iron and lots of coal. You know, from the ground. Which meant digging a lot. And they kept finding the same kinds of skeleton-looking 'rocks' in the same layers and sequences which made locating the stuff they were digging for a lot easier. The word got around. Maybe not always through academic channels, but the mining engineers out in the field sure got to know that when they started finding this or that type of fossil that they could expect this or that type of material next. And they knew the eggheads would throw a bit of coin their way for the fossils.

Question creationists don't want to answer

[teeth]

1) Who/what the fuck made god?

Heh, ask this question, and you'll get uncomfortable feet-shuffling and red faces. Be prepared to be called a "realist".

from the chickens-coming-home-to-roost dept....

[argStyopa]

Let's see:
1) An educational system that, since the 1970's at LEAST has developed a pervasive philosophy of social promotion, moral relativism, and anti-intellectualism*. Teachers compensated not against performance, but according to time served.
2) Schools that have so much corruption, kickbacks, and a positively Medieval fixed resistance to change that they look like Papa Doc's Haiti.
3) Dependence on rote learning, memorization, and 'teaching to the test'.
4) A culture that agrees that your average pro baseball player should make $45/minute ($2.3 mill/yr), and popular icons are Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, but there's little money for consistent space exploration.
* if you disagree, you've never seriously tried to dispute a politically-correct position in a modern American university system. No matter the labels, it's NOT about 'discourse', it's dogma. It may be liberal dogma, but it's dogma nonetheless.
I'll be blunt: people who believe in creationism are ignorant. The American educational system is turning out ignorant graduates. Why is anyone surprised that as these people grow into adulthood they are easily led by charismatics touting infantile ideas?

Re:from the chickens-coming-home-to-roost dept....

[Planesdragon]

I'll be blunt: people who believe in creationism are ignorant.

Not necessarilly. They're non-scientific, but they're not all automatically "ignorant."

Science simply cannot prove, by an measure, that the Universe was not created whole by one supreme force with the power to place every particle, wave, and plank in whatever postion the being desired. It can't prove that this wasn't what happend at the big bang, it can't prove that this didn't happen 7,000 years ago, and it can't prove that it didn't happen 150 years ago.

What science can do is dismiss it as "beyond the reach of science", and not waste the time of scientists fighting a religous disucssion.

FACT: We can observe evolution in action through the historical record and through watching living animals adapt generation after generation. It is a reasonable scientific asumption to think that we as humans fit this pattern, and that there was a leap somewhere between "not-human but humanlike smart animal" and "human." But until time travel is invented, it's impossible to scientifcally prove or disprove the sudden creation of man by God.

There has been no charismatic anybody expousing me to go to religion. My ideas are my own, and while they may be sophmoric, I think that they're a bit more than "infantile."

Re:from the chickens-coming-home-to-roost dept....

[argStyopa]

"Science simply cannot prove, by an measure, that the Universe was not created whole by one supreme force with the power to place every particle, wave, and plank in whatever postion the being desired. It can't prove that this wasn't what happend at the big bang, it can't prove that this didn't happen 7,000 years ago, and it can't prove that it didn't happen 150 years ago."

Well, let's put it this way. No, I cannot prove that the universe didn't exist before I was born. There is no possible way that I can PROVE (to your level of evidence) that everything wasn't created the instant I was born (so as to APPEAR that it was in existance for billions of years leading up to the moment of my birth).

Yet, I think most people would agree that, if I held such a belief, I would be pretty "ignorant". Ignorant = willing to make a monumental leap (call it faith, whatever) rather than believing something that seems to follow a more reasonable train of cause/effect.

Yeah, I know there's probably a better way to say that, but I'm tired.

You're a Christian? Good on ya, cobber. But that doesn't necessarily validate everything you believe to be true.

Re:from the chickens-coming-home-to-roost dept....

[Planesdragon]

Yet, I think most people would agree that, if I held such a belief, I would be pretty "ignorant". Ignorant = willing to make a monumental leap (call it faith, whatever) rather than believing something that seems to follow a more reasonable train of cause/effect.

That's mis-using the word. Ignorant means not knowing the facts. The word you're looking for is "unreasonable." You can call someone ignorant if they don't know that OJ Simpson was tried for murder; if they know about the trial and think that he's innocent, you can call him "unreasonable", not "ignorant."

For just about any avenue in life you take, following any creed, it will probably do you good to aknowledge the possibility that everything that we know is wrong. If nothing else, it will help you adapt when you are proven to be wrong. (It happens to everyone, even God.)

You're a Christian? Good on ya, cobber. But that doesn't necessarily validate everything you believe to be true.

Of course it doesn't. All it means is that I believe a few things, many of which are awfully unscientific. Then again, if we left everything to science, we'd probably still be stuck in a time of feudalism and war.

No, we don't have to

[Jonathan]

There, its all there, nothing else has to be said you can go on to a different article now.

Why do think that an article dealing with a book about evolution needs to start a flame war at all? Articles dealing with books about physics don't start flame wars -- people interested in physics discuss the book and people ignorant of physics ignore the article. Why can't that be the case for evolution?

Re:No, we don't have to

[junkgrep]

The book "Tower of Babel" touches on this. Evolution threatens a core idea: that humans are special. The other sciences may threaten Biblical claims (like modern language theory certain threatens the "Tower of Babel" story), but none are as threatening as taking away the idea of special creation and special design.

Re:No, we don't have to

[DunbarTheInept]

I think it's more that many of the sciences lead to useful obvious working "stuff" we use every day, and those sciences that laymen can obviously *tell* have this effect end up not getting much ridicule. Every time you use a computer, you are validating that the scientists who described how electricity works "got it right". Every time you start your car engine you validate many current theories of chemistry and physics. But the sciences that study the history of our world don't have obvious application to the layman. (They do have application, but not that the layman typically realizes.) And so, in the end, the places where the "obviously useful" sciences contradict the bible, people understand that the science can't be wrong if they use items that employ it every day, and they grudgingly have to accept that the bible is wrong (or as they typically dodge, start claiming it's just a metaphor and conveniently forget that they only called it a metaphor AFTER science showed it can't be literally true.)

But they don't see the connection between the sciences that prove evolution has happened and the normal useful applications of science they witness every day, and so they don't accept such things.

It's not that evolution is more "threatening". It's that it's not something that leads to a modern invention people can hold in their hands and see working.

Re:No, we don't have to

[junkgrep]

It's that it's not something that leads to a modern invention people can hold in their hands and see working. Well, that may be why its not as easy to allay their fears, but I also think that evolution is pretty singular in terms of the way it impacts what's considered a key and core story in the Bible. Also remember that until Darwin, there had never been such a serious and sustained blow to the idea Biblical literalism: most people didn't even know that such a thing was even possible, and evolution took the wind out of a lot of people. So historically, it's been the herald-bell of the serious split between religious claims about factual reality, and science, and probably gets a lot of the focus from that.

Re:Darwin on the opposition, actually

[ianscot]

That's a quote from the chapters of Species... in which he anticipates and even suggests possible proofs for potential objections to his theory. Darwin goes on to elaborate quite a bit on the arguments you could have either way about it, of course. The whole watch-watchmaker, "irreducible complexity" canard got its start in those passages of Darwin's. You can even see how it all got settled in the nineteenth century, if you'd like to read up.

Compare and contrast the intellectual honesty Darwin showed in approaching objections to his theory this way with your own duplicity and/or ignorance in quoting him so ridiculously out of context. Doesn't look good for you.

Darwin and Racism

[Anonymous Coward]

There are some ugly points about the implications of Darwin's book (full title: "On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life") which are not mentioned in this review. If you're going to examine Darwin and the results of his theory, you need to know things were not all rosy.

First, the horrific case of Ota Benga.

A well written summary of the dark side here. Look in that section for the bit about how Aborigines were targetted for extermination.

Re:Darwin and Racism

[ianscot]

The implications of Christianity included such atrocities as the Crusades and the inquisition; does that mean the kernel of its ideas was inherently evil? (I'm inclined to identify those horrors as far closer to the Christian message as I see it in the Bible than Darwin's ideas were to "social Darwinism," but either way it doesn't follow.)

Don't you worry; aboriginal native Americans were having their graves robbed by devout, God-fearing pilgrims before Darwin's father was a twinkle in his grandmother's eye.

Re:Darwin and Racism

[Anonymous Coward]

The Roman Catholics are the ones who committed the atrocities such as the inquisition (which killed untold numbers of Bible believing genuine Christians) and the crusades.

Re:Darwin and Racism

[ianscot]

And somehow "the Roman Catholics" are further from "Christianity" than social Darwinists are from Darwin? How, exactly?

Re:Darwin and Racism

[Anonymous Coward]

Darwinists of whatever ilk draw their basic philosophy from Darwin; Roman Catholicism is primarily the pagan religion of Rome and Babylon (idols, statues, prayers to and for the dead, "Queen of Heaven", etc. etc.) with a cover sheet of Christian terminology. It goes back to Constantine, not to Christ.

Revelation 15:4

[stevet96]

"Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name?
For you alone are holy."

Revelation 15:4

Re:Revelation 15:4

[Anonymous Coward]

Get bent.

Re: Einstein on Religion

[johnrpenner]

> Einsteins "religiosity" was far more about aesthetic
> sensibility than about doctrine. He is talking
> about a feeling of wonder, not about belief.

agreed - its not about 'belief in doctrine'.
einstein's views on religion (as can be seen by reading
his essay) was much profounder than mere dogma.

because of all the BS of dogma, people often throw out
any sense of 'religious wonder' out the window along
with it - einstein nicely deliniates between that
sort of religiosity and what he calls 'cosmic religious feeling'.

regards,
john

NOT

[FreeUser]

The notion that Einstein was a God Fearing Christian is demonstrably a myth, one that is being deliberately, maliciously, and with profound intellectual dishonestly promoted by the religious right.

It ranks up their with their tendency to characterize Hitler, and Naziism, as an athiest regime when in fact Hitler, and most of the Nazis, were devoutly Christian.

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein in Albert Einstein: The Human Side

His references to God (playing dice) etc. were metaphorical, not literal, as anyone who has read any of Einstein's works can trivially observe.

"Here"

[Pac]

"Here" is my comment was meant to refer to Brazil. Sorry for the ambiguity. On the other hand, I support all moderation to hide creationist trolls and I am also not aware of the existence of any other kind of creationist. Slashdot should not harbour archaic superstition, else the next thing we will be reading is that Windows is evil because Bill Gates astral map says so.

"Here"

[Pac]

Please read my response that ponted to the same ambiguity in my comment.

Care, studying

[Pac]

In short, no, I don't care to read you book of all truth, nor will I study useless superstition posed as serious opposing views for your sake.

If you can't see how what you just posted contradicts all known science, alas, I am not your teacher, I am not your preacher, I am not responsible for you.

My position is pretty clear, I believe all creationist noise should be moderated down as trolls here (and I am not persecuting you alone, I also think references to astrology, Bach florals, and other superstitions should also have the same fate). You are just trying to disrupt a discussion about scientific books and issues with your useless nonsense. Hence, you are just common trolls disguised as defenders of a "truth" only you can see.

clams, clams, and more clams

[Anonymous Coward]

If you guys had been keeping up with the guru that
Cruise, Travolta, and a bunch of other well meaning
but hopelessly confused stars follow, you would know
that we evolved from CLAMS.
As you you will one day find out, once the planet
has been cleared of course, We evolved from clams.
No more insanity.
No more criminality,
No more war.
Darwin was wrong.

Re:Let's go to an evangelical Christian web site..

[Black Parrot]

> Before replying, consider that a "theory" is not some wild-assed notion that someone pulled out of their *ss. It's not conjecture or wild speculation.

Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term THEORY is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain HOW life evolves... it is important to understand that the current questions about how life evolves in no way implies any disagreement over the fact of evolution.

Alas, the typical creationist is so ignorant of science - to say nothing of the history of science - that they think they can validate their beliefs by nitpicking at various aspects of the theory of evolution.

The fact is, basic geology had already done irreparable damage to biblical literalism by the time Darwin set foot on Beagle. Creationists tend to combat the theory of evolution as if it were a rival religious sect in competition with their own for membership recruitment, when in fact it is merely an attempt to explain all the stuff we've discovered that the bible can't comfortably be stretched to cover anymore. The theory of evolution didn't displace creationism; it merely filled the void after creationism had already been shown to be contrafactual. Creationists are charging the wrong windmill.

That guy on SNL?

[Anonymous Coward]

"6) How do you counter the charge that modern Information Theory (IT) renders evolution all but impossible?"

Are you saying that IT workers show no advance in complexity compared to apes? Like the "moooove" guy on SNL?

That's not very nice, you know. Just because IT work doesn't really seem much more complex than eating a bananna (sir, is your computer plugged in?) is no reason to attack the central organizing principle of biology.

Most of which is much harder than getting the floppy disk out of the zip drive...

Re: Lamarckian evolution

[mfnickster]

In a sense, once we modify our own "germ line" i.e. the genes of our gametes, then we are indeed experiencing Lamarckian evolution.

I don't think the technology counts until it becomes part of our physical constitution. After all, we are discussing biological evolution, not cultural evolution. ...aren't we? :)

- MFN

This is...

[Anonymous Coward]

etymologically wrong, at the very least. Allah is a contraction of "al-ilah", which literally means "THE god". Actually, the wider point is something else - there had been a belief in a one god, evidence for which exists in what is known about the Hunafa'. It would appear that in pre-Islamic Mecca, there had, indeed, been a number of less significant deities, and a pantheon had arisen in the sense that many held these deities to be subordinate to this one god.

Nice try, though.

Science has done a great job ...

[wordup]

Science has done a great job of helping us discover God. It has helped us understand God in ourselves through psychology. It helps us relate to how other facets of God work in other people though sociology. It helps us relate to God in the physical world through physics, chemistry, and biology. It helps us relate to God in the metaphysical world through mathematics, logic, and philosophy.

Science has done a great deal to help us in discovering God. Science just hasn't called it that.

But perhaps that's just me, being too logical in my faith.

Word.

I don't have the book but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I do have this link to Behe saying that in his book he said that he wasn't a creationist and did not doubt common descent. (Common descent with modification is, of course, Darwin's theory of evolution.)

Just to clarify he then goes on to say that his belief is that, "evolution occurred, but was guided by God."

Does that suffice to establish that Behe believes that macroevolution happened?

PS A tip for online discussion. Going to lengths to declare your credentials is a bad idea. If you actually deserve those credentials it will be obvious fast enough anyways. And anyone can declare anything - making the declaration worthless. (In fact it has negative value - people see it as an admission that you are saying something that isn't very believable.)

Re:I don't have the book but...

[young-earth]

In that link (and in his book) he says he's a "theistic evolution" believer; but that is most certainly not in accord with the claim as written that

he concedes macroevolution in all its guises

since macroevolution has as a basic tenet that it is unguided and uses random mutations as its basic fuel. That is what is currently referred to as "neo-Darwinian" evolution, using Darwin's basic concept merged with an understanding of DNA based genetics.

In fact if you read the link you posted, it talks about how Eugenie Scott criticized Behe's book but she is the one who clearly had not understood (or perhaps had not read) the book, since she was the one who made the claim that Behe does not believe in evolution.

On the topic you brought up of credentials, I have found that those engaged in discussion with creation science types routinely make an attack assuming an utter lack of scientific training on the part of the creationist. I've also learned to short-circuit the most absurd counterpoints in order to move the discussion to more useful arenas, such as the topic at hand, rather than the very typical ad hominem attack used as a first pass.

Re:I don't have the book but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Three quick points:

1. Accepting macro-evolution in my books means accepting that descent with modification has happened, roughly in accord with what Darwin described. What Behe believes is that key changes happened through divine intervention. But he accepts that, for instance, humans and chimps share a common ancestor that is on the evidence more recent than the common ancestor of either and a gorilla. This is not in accord with the the views of many creationists who like to quote Behe.
   
2. You are mistaken to call Eugenie Scott ...the one who clearly had not understood... There are many who have misunderstood Behe on this point, hence previous conversations in this thread. (And judging from your first post, I suspect that you are among them.)
   
3. About credentials. It is true that many supporters of evolution with more arrogance than comprehension act as you suggest. It is equally true that there are many prominent creationists around who wave around credentials that are (upon inspection) dubious at best. And it is definitely true that people who have been on the net for a few years (a decade in my case) tend to flip a "bozo switch" when people descend into pointing out their credentials. Hence my well-meant advice to leave that off. For people where it short-circuits discussion, it wouldn't be a problem anyways. For people who flip the bozo switch, it leaves discussion open.
   

Re:I don't have the book but...

[young-earth]

Thanks for the reply.

In my opinion, having read and listened to Behe a fair bit, is that his fundamental point about ID is that the initial steps, like the flagellum motor or the eye could not possibly have arisen without divine intervention. That's his area of expertise, and he accepts without criticism what most of his colleagues in other branches of bio say. But again, the original poster made a statement which was overly broad which I was trying to correct.

And you're quite right that Ms. Scott is far from the only one to call Behe (mistakenly) a creationist in the YEC camp. Having read his book and some of his other works, I do not classify him as such. However neither is he a pure neo-Darwinist as the initial poster claimed.

And you're quite right about knee-jerk jerks on all sides of this issue. I admit I flip the bozo bit on some evolutionists when they start citing Miller-Urey or Haeckel as being great proofs of Darwin.

BTW if you want to stretch your mind, try Gentry's book. It's far afield of Darwin, but very interesting.

Re: Lamarckian evolution

[mofolotopo]

That's pretty much what I was trying to say.

Sorry, not interested

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years ago I spent a long time discussing creationism versus evolution online. After too much time spent I grew weary of it, and have ceased. One reason for my growing weary is that I like to see people's positions accurately represented, and knee-jerk responses from both sides of the aisle don't do that. When I finally had reached the point where I had seen the same arguments repeat so often that I was having trouble resisting the knee-jerk responses myself, I bowed out.

Incidentally which poster is the "initial poster" that you criticized? PineHall who pointed out that Behe sees intelligent design at the molecular level? Me as AC who pointed out that he accepts the general outline of evolution? ianscott who was the poster who annoyed you enough to respond? I am curious.

Another reason that I stopped actively pursing evolution vs creationism discussion is that creationists have a strong tendancy to start with a conclusion and then find arguments that support it, rather than to start looking for information about the world and then accept the conclusions that they come to. The result is that often you see major things ignored to get the desired conclusion. (I would that I had a nickel for every time I have seen a quote used to claim that some scientist or another didn't believe in evolution which, when seen in the original context, obviously meant the opposite of what was claimed...) After a certain point the game of figuring out what was missed or deliberately ignored comes to seem pointless.

For instance I haven't read the book that you recommend. Nor am I particularly interested. Instead I go to www.talkorigins.org and look for the first thing they have on the topic. If I was still interested in creationism versus evolution I would look to get your book, read it, read the criticism, and come up with my own critique of both. I would then try to simplify that and boil it down to a coherent opinion of my own that I could give to anyone who asks.

The problem is that having done that a few dozen times already I have pretty good reason to believe that I will find a few details on which the FAQ is unfair to Robert Gentry, but I will agree with the broad sweep of its criticism. And doing so will take me a lot of time, which I have more enjoyable ways to spend. So yeah, this is a pretty lazy way to dismiss your well-intended effort, but I have my eyes on a couple of books on programming and workplace productivity that look more interesting to me...

If you wish to discuss this further I won't be looking for this thread any more, but my email address encoded like yours is is 'moc.liamarepo' 'ta' 'yllit_neb'.

Re:Sorry, not interested

[young-earth]

I'm responding to you on /. and in email, since this then satisfies both any lurkers and your questions...

The post that I was commenting on was the one you figured, by ianscott who made the very sweeping statement about Behe and Darwin (as quoted above repeatedly).

I understand your frustration in cr-ev discussions; I have seen the things that frustrate you about some creationists in many evolution defenders as well. They seem to start from an assumption that everything can be explained in a purely humanistic, materialistic, naturalistic way, and absolutely deny any possibility of God. Pitting advocacy sites against each other is kind of debate by proxy, and it's never very effective unless all the parties have an actual understanding of the topic involved.

The book I mentioned by Gentry is not about redshift (the link you provided is about his redshift theory), the book is about pleochroic halos caused by Po-218. I have not researched the redshift theory of Gentry's sufficiently to comment on it myself. Talkorigins has also addressed the topic of Gentry's book, but Jeff Brawley (who did an awesome job of amateur scientist in his field work) apparently missed some key papers by Gentry in Nature and Science in the 60s and 70s. These papers (published in the book too) show Gentry designing and conducting experiments to see if the possible cause of the halos was Rn gas seepage. He comprehensively proved it was not and could not have been caused by Rn seepage, and Brawley ignores that fact for whatever reason. Unfortunately talkorigins has left his post up for a long time, even though it was disproved decades ago.

And please do at least check out an overall review of the inaccuracies in the talkorigins site.

Re: Lamarckian evolution

[blue trane]

I don't think the technology counts until it becomes part of our physical constitution. After all, we are discussing biological evolution, not cultural evolution. ...aren't we? :)

Since the technology to modify our own "germ line" comes out of written memes, they seem to be linked