Darwin Evolving Into A Tricky Exhibit

rbochan writes "The new Darwin Exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History has 'failed to find a corporate sponsor in the United States because American companies are anxious not to take sides in the heated debate between scientists and fundamentalist Christians over the theory of evolution' according to articles at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Telegraph, and The Register. The $US3 million needed for the exhibit was met by private charitable donations."

Comments

Most disturbing.....

[BWJones]

Pathetic. I am much more willing to give my business to those companies that can take a stand. Furthermore, as a professor in the biosciences, I am especially troubled by stories like this. Perhaps even more disturbing is that this does not appear to be a news item covered in the mainstream US media. I had to learn about this first from Slashdot, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Telegraph and The Register, thanks to ~rbochan.

Arguably, much of our current understanding of biology and bioscience (development of drugs and antibiotics, medicine etc...etc...etc...) and many things that may surprise you are due to a fundamental understanding of biology. Try future developments in body armor, engineering, acoustics, propulsion and search algorithms on for size. All of those disparate fields have been influenced and guided by cross-polination from bioscience and ignoring or even worse, rejecting a scientific understanding of the world will only hold us back.

It is particularly ironic because one of the missions of the American Museum of Natural History is education of those very same individuals and corporations who are benefitting from decades of science education in the United States.

Religious extremism come in many flavors folks, and if we are not careful, we are going to lose our edge. Remember, this country is only a couple hundred years old. Those societies that have embraced education and science historically are those societies that survive.

Re:Most disturbing.....

[Qzukk]

In the end, I'd much rather that companies don't take a stand. Not about evolution, not about politics, not about anything else. The fewer companies that throw their weight around for whatever reason, good or bad, the more our country moves towards something representative of the desires of the human beings who live here.

I'm sure that many of the same CxOs who refused to risk their company's image put their own money in the pot. Now if only they'd do the same for everything else.

Re:Most disturbing.....

[SilverspurG]

I read all three articles and not a single one can honestly say that it was because of debate between scientists and fundamentalist Christians. First, it really isn't much of a debate. The only people debating it are people who've got their fingers lodged firmly in their ears. Second, the articles only acknowledge that corporate sponsors declined to participate this year. It's much more likely there was a change in a tax loophole which prompted the shift than there was any worry about fundamentalist Christians boycotting the museum's sponsors.

For Pete's sake... does anybody question anything anymore?

Re:Most disturbing.....

[jedidiah]

No, it wasn't science. It was literacy and tolerance. These are precisely the sort of values that allow things such as science to flourish. These are also the sort of values that would prevent even the most religiously zealous members of some 4000 year old culture from interfering with a science curriculum.

One must bear in mind that the Vatican doesn't even think that "Intellegent Design" has any place in a science classroom.

No, shenanigans of this sort are being driven by the protestant equivalent of the Taliban.

Re:Most disturbing.....

[karzan]

Name any society that has survived more than 4000 years ever.

I assume what you mean by 'society' is not an ethnic group but a kind of recognisable contiguous social formation. Even this is hard to define--for example, did British society as we know it today begin in the dark ages, did it begin 1000 years ago or is it really so fundamentally different now to what it was then that we can't call it the same society?

But even if we forget this difficulty and just go by conventional definitions, for things like the Roman Empire or ancient Egypt, I think you would be hard pressed to find any society that has ever lasted more than 4000 years. For example, ancient Egypt as we think of it, i.e. as a unified state/civilisation, lasted from approximately 3200 BC to 332 BC, i.e. less than 3000 years. And despite the old European myth of an 'ancient Africa', most of the sub-Saharan African societies that existed at the time of colonisation were largely the result of migration of Bantu peoples starting in approximately the 2nd millennium BC making these societies at the very most 4000 years old, but in reality because of the lack of written history we have know way of knowing if there was much historical continuity in them at all, as opposed to changing through many phases.

The idea of civilisations that exist in recognisable form for very long periods of time is a myth. Human society is inherently unstable. Tribal groups as much as other kinds of society often destroy each other, or destroy the environment on which they depend through overexploitation. As far as anyone knows, there has just never really been a time when there have been societies that have lasted much more than 4000 years, and even the 3000 years of the Egyptian state is based on a very loose definition of a society when you consider the changes that occurred in Egyptian history.

Don't mean to nitpick, but if you are trying to claim that religion holds societies together for many thousands of years, I don't think the case can be argued on that basis.

Re:Most disturbing.....

[timeOday]

Do we even know whether or not this was about taking a stand on Darwin in the first place? I only read the first article, but I saw exactly 0 companies quoted as witholding support to avoid controversy. It's a very slippery business trying to ascribe one particular cause to the lack of support for a fundraiser. "I'm persecuted" sounds a lot better than "nobody's interested." I've never been to any natural history museum that even hinted at anything other than Darwinism, so I don't see why it would be so controversial now.

Re:Most disturbing.....

[PureCreditor]

> Name any society that has survived more than 4000 years ever.

May I point that the Chinese society began in B.C. times. While Babylon evaporated, Greece subsided, Egypt mummified, and Roman collapsed, the Chinese culture survived, and still running strong today.

Sure, the political ideology has changed along the way, from citystate-hood (pre BC times) to imperialism to democracy (very short period of time pre-WW2) to communism, yet the Chinese culture continues to evolve and flourish.

Re:Most disturbing.....

[Total_Wimp]

I'm going to assume that you're simply ignorant as to the wide-held understanding of the scientific theory of evolution. Simply put, it's about as solidly understood as the shape of the Earth. There is no such thing as a mainstream biological scientist either unsure or, or actually studying an alternate theory to, the theory of evolution. These scientists are not "militant athiests" (whatever that is), and characterizing them as such signals very clearly that you've never really looked into the matter in a serious way. I suggest you take the time to look into it now. It'll be an eye-opener for you.

TW

You say it like it's a bad thing...

[XorNand]

The $US3 million needed for the exhibit was met by private charitable donations.

IMHO, the arts and sciences should be supported by private donations, not corporate sponsors. Professional sports have been utterly ruined by sponsorship. I'd hate to see the arts go down the same drain, esp. in situations like this. Can you imagine Dali being turned down by a gallery who said his work might not fit the status quo as dictated by Standard Oil? (yes I know he was Spanish) Sometimes good art and good science fly in the face of public opinion. Institutions who increasingly seek more and more of their budget from corporations are doing an extreme disservice to themselves and to the public.

Debate?

[taskforce]

Sorry, there's an actual debate going on?

As in those presenting the current crop of alternate theories have a leg to stand on? This is really news to me.

Why not big pharma?

[Biff Stu]

They need a trained workforce that understands biology and chemistry. If the religious wack jobs can't handle it, let them boycott the latest antibiotics. After all, bacteria don't evolve, right?

Re:Here's a silly thought

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Any "balanced" exhibit would come down firmly on the side of Darwin to the total exclusion of the others. Both ID and Young Earth creationism are so full of crap that there's no way to present them accurately and scientifically without alienating the creationist (including ID) crowd. Asking for a "balanced" Darwin exhibit that gives fair play to creationism is like asking for a "balanced" Hubble exhibit that gives fair play to astrology.

The Real Problem Here

[Nom du Keyboard]

The real problem to the Fundamentalist Christians is not that Evolution is wrong -- but that it's right!

You can ignore what's wrong without worry. It's a lot harder to ignore what you know is right. It's a lot more likely that the dinosaurs are millions of years old, rather than that the entire Earth was created only 8K years ago and God put the fossils there to confound the unbelievers.

Trying to remove the only theory that actually has some evidence to support it from discussion overall, or elevate truly unproven speculations to having equal weight, only confuses children -- and harms the nation's future.

Re:Evolution is Theory After All

[geomon]

There's no denying that evolution is far from established fact and is fundamentally a theory with PLENTY of holes and unanswered questions.

As to the mechanism of evolution, yes there is debate in the scientific commmunity. As to whether evolution has occurred, there is no debate in the scientific community.

To me I see those zealots who accept evolution as fact in the same light as how *they* perceive Christians and Christianity: mindless minions of bad logic and reasoning.

So you reject the notion that there is any evidence for the *fact* that evolution has occurred?

Explain why there are so many shared genes between species. In fact, the human genome is one big code sharing exercise.

It just seems like evolutionists want to skip a whole bunch of steps and not do the actual science required to figure out if the evidence supports their theory or not.

What steps have they skipped?

That's the scientific method, folks. You never PROVE anything: you have evidence that either supports or doesn't support your theory.

And you haven't done anything to support your position other than flap your arms around wildly.

Show us the holes in evolution. Show us where steps have been missed. Show us how YOU would apply the scientific method any differently to, say, the theory of gravity.

Re:Agenda.....

[Xtifr]

Even if that were true (and I think you're thinking of Huxley), it has nothing to do with his theory or with evolution. Do you think that any exhibit about Newton's Theory of Gravity should have to "be accurate" in that Newton was a religious crank who spent a large part of his time working on insane theories of alchemy? Are Newton's beliefs about alchemy in any way relevent to his theories of gravity, thermodynamics or light?

In any case, Darwin's experience of religion was fairly limited. Most religions by now have come to terms with the discoveries of science and natural philosophy, including most forms of Christianity. It is not "Christians" who object to the Theory of Gravity^WRelativity^WEvolution, it is a tiny, but vocal (and annoying, and scary), minority of Christians. Christians who no more represent the mainstream of Christianity than the Muslim suicide bombers (who they strongly resemble) represent the mainstream of Mohammedism.

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended
us to forgo their use."
    -- Galileo Galilei

Re:Evolution is Theory After All

[MightyMartian]

Can you cite a single theory that doesn't have holes? Are we to reject Einsteinian gravity because we don't have a quantum theory to go along with it? And who do you suppose these alleged zealots are? Are you calling about 99.9% of the scientific community zealots because they reject Creationism or its ugly child Intelligent Design?

Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII

[general_re]

If you don't think that what is in the Bible is literal, you CAN'T be a Christian.

So when Christ said "I am the door" (John 10:9), do you suppose he had hinges and a doorknob?

Re:Nothing ever really changes

[meringuoid]

Seems like the ultimate sin of hubris to me.

To my mind, these fundamentalists are more guilty of idolatry. The idolaters of old made themselves graven images of their gods, and worshipped them. In time they came to completely forget their gods and worship the images; this was abhorrent to the Hebrews, whose prohibition on such things had led them to relate to their god more directly.

What is the modern equivalent of these idolaters? Why, the biblical inerrantists. They have made themselves a graven image of God, not made of wood or of gold or marble but of words. They have defined their god so narrowly and restricted him within the ancient text, and cannot conceive of anything beyond the holy scripture. Thus these idolaters try to shout down anyone who dares examine the world itself for clues to the nature of the creation, and confine themselves to Genesis.

It's a tragedy, because assuming for the sake of argument that there is a God, then they're missing some of his best tricks. Evolution is a brilliant hack - a system that you can set up and just let run, and all the work is done for you. It must give God some of the same kind of kick we hackers get when we replace a thousand lines of brutal code with a single concise iterative function... And as for nucleosynthesis, the means by which the heavy elements that constitute much of the Earth were made, if God came up with that then he has a sense of style that I really like. Seeding the universe with metals from supernovae - amazing.

But no. The idolaters remain with their hollow Bronze Age god of words, words that they worship night and day, memorise and repeat to themselves, shout out at street corners... Idolatry, indeed.

uhm, hardly.

[slashkitty]

If I wanted to raise 10 billion dollars for world peace, and no one gave me any money, does that mean that EVERYONE is against world peace?

Re:Evolution is Theory After All

[geomon]

I'm not going to debate certain aspects of evolution because I think it would be ridiculous. Yes, we have a fossil records. Yes, dinosaurs once roamed the earth. Yes, there are enough similarities betweem certain species to support the idea that they descended from common ancestors. Yes, the earth is roughly four gazillion years old based on our understanding of carbon dating, etc.. That's all well and good.

But it doesn't PROVE evolution.

Then I guess nothing other than the evidence you have cited yourself will ever convince you that evolution is real.

They're not doing the hard science and answering the tough questions, like why, for instance, if intelligence in humans is SO important and crucial to our survival (we have no sharp teeth, claws, we can't run or climb or swim well compared to the rest of the animal kingdom), then why did it take so long for intelligence to develop in humans (say within the past 100,000 years)? How was it possible that WE survived all those years effectively at a huge disadvantage physically?

That intelligence did not develop in the last 100K years. It developed over the course of 3.5 million years.

That's a tough question that NO ONE has been able to answer definitively with facts.

Pick up a good anthropology text written in the last twenty years. You will see the evidence presented for gradual intellectual development in higher primates including humans.

Instead, what we get is "there was once this primordial soup in the oceans (what it was we couldn't tell ya but it was there! and we can't replicate it!) and then some shit went down and here we are."

That is abiogenesis, not evolution.

You have skipped about 4.5 billion years of development from the primordial soup and humans too.

Wow. I'm stunned by the brilliance of that.

Then you don't read much.

And you're right: gravity is based on theory, just like relativity, and most of the "hard" sciences.

What constitutes a "hard" science?

But there are smart people doing responsible tough science on those theories. And they don't just throw shit on the wall to see what sticks.

Neither do geologists, biologists, paleontologists, or anthropologists.

Have you ever taken one of these courses to see how the ideas that support them were develeoped?

Re:As one of those fundamentalists...

[brpr]

Gould contended that scientists have an 'a priori commitment to naturalism' which in my view prevents scientists from considering whether something supernatural might be the primary cause.

Actually, the difference between the "natural" and "supernatural" doesn't exist a prioi -- we just consider anything which has a scientific explanation to be "natural". So before Newton came up with overwhelming evidence for gravity, the idea of action at a distance (i.e. forces, etc.) was considered to be supernatural (Newton himself was troubled by the need to make use of "occult forces" in his explanations).

The trouble with creationism, then, isn't that it relies on supernatural explanations (whatever they are exactly), but that it doesn't make any predictions. Let's assume that God created life on Earth. What does that tell you about life on Earth? Nothing, since God is inscrutable and he could have made life in whatever form he wanted to. Evolution, on the other hand, does make predictions. For example you predict that organisms will be highly modular and structured, that organisms will show clear similarities owing to their having a common ancestor, etc.

I just want to say this

[Viper233]

Put Simply... there is no God, no Heaven, no Hell, no Devil, no reincarnation, no magic...

These figures/beliefs were created by the same creatures who believe and idolise them, i.e. humans.
In our existance (this world, universe) there are things that occur in this world that we cannot yet explain, this can make us feel somewhat insignificant and futile in our existance. It raises such questions as

• Why am I here?
• What is my purpose?
• What will happen to me when I no longer exist?
• What will be the consequences of my actions in this life?

This can somewhat be related to the need to believe in something!! (put simply in one aspect). Humans also feel compelled to hold morals and respect for others. Some(most) of us naturally become upset when people are treated unfairly(+many synonyms). Religion has been designed and evolved to accomodate and somewhat enforce this. E.g. don't kill, don't steal, don't cheat people, don't kill animals, don't eat meat, don't be greedy etc. Someone could probably better explain this need better than I can but be seen to be present in every culture with certain themes current through out.

Here are some other characters that I have believed in over my life (especially as a child) that were created by man

• Santa Claus
• The Tooth fairy
• The Easter bunny
• Superman
• The Teeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Monkey Magic
• Jesus

I was told by an enlightened Christian friend in the past that I would be going to hell after I died due to me not accepting God and Jesus... at the time I didn't ask her what the consequences were for no longer believing in the other characters, I wonder what the consequences would be?

--
This is for you Claire

So let me get this straight...

[jlowery]

US companies want to complain about the neglect of science education in this country, yet don't want to support an exhibit on one of the most groundbreaking ideas of modern science.

You get what you pay for, fellas.

Re:The "problem" with Evolution

[porcupine8]

can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

In fact, Darwin himself made predictions based on his theories that were proven true. Here is a quick overview of one example - he saw a particular flower and predicted that a particular shape of insect must exist to pollinate it, even though he knew of no such insect at the time. Such an insect was found many years later.

Evolution is called a theory because it does meet the scientific criteria for a theory - it has been thoroughly tested (come on, it's been around for over a century, do you HONESTLY believe no one has thought to test it??) and, yes, mathematically modelled even. Many times.

The problem with Intelligent Design is that it does NOT meet the criteria (that you yourself give) for a theory, but its supporters try to present it as one on equal footing with evolution. ID is a hypothesis or a conjecture, evolution is a theory. You seem to understand the difference - most people's problem is that they don't, and they think that since evolution is a theory that means we have no clue if it's really right.

Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII

[rbochan]

The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round,
for I have seen the shadow on the moon,
and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.
        -- Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521)

Myths

[Bassman59]

I hope that in a couple thousand years, if we haven't blown up the planet, civilizations will look back at the Christ story and the Biblical creation myths as exactly that, a mythology, one viewed in the same way that we look at the myths of the old Greek and Roman gods.

Re:As one of those fundamentalists...

[el-spectre]

This is something of a false premise... why CAN'T we observe, test and falsify these things? Ok, the really old (microbial) life didn't fossilize too well, but we've got 2 billion years of decent records and it all supports evolution. We have a mechanism, evidence, and sufficient time... so what's the problem?

Here's why we teach "materialist philosophy": It works. Regardless of faith in supernatural beings, gas still makes your car go. Even if you disbelieve in petroleum, the engine will run. As they say, 'reality' is what is left even when you stop believing.

It is not practical to explore all possibilities. It's POSSIBLE that an alien in another galaxy makes my engine run, or Jesus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster... or chemical reactions. Since the latter seems to work remarkably well, the burden is on proponents of other claims to provide evidence.

Scientists content that there is nothing outside nature. This is because we have not experienced anything that is not explainable within our 'natural' outlook. There are things we don't understand very well, sure, but nothing entirely outside the rules.

Of course, it IS possible the God (or aliens, or the FSM) has rigged the universe to appear 'natural'. I can't see worshipping such a vindictive creator :)

Literal Interpretation is Heresy

[shis-ka-bob]

The normal (Catholic, Orthodox and mainstream Protestant) position is that the Bible is the Word of God as revealed to man. The Revelation is considered perfect, but the imperfect writer records the message imperfectly. This is completely consistent with Shanon's information theory describing communication through a noisy (imperfect) channel. If I was a Bronze Age scribe and the history of the universe from Big Bang through the ascent of man (via evolution) was revealed to me, my recount of the history would be no more accurate that the average stoner's recollection of an acid trip. Even a casual reading of Genesis 1 and 2 shows logical inconsistencies in things as basic as to the order of Creation.

Fundimentalists that insist on a literal interpretation should be called to task as Heretics. I will argue that a Fundimentalist that reject his intellect is rejecting one of God's greatest gifts.

Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII

[Maxo-Texas]

Very clever.

What amazes me is how people die and kill over something that has as much validity as the AD&D Gods, Dieties & Demigods handbook.

Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.

Re:Evolution is Theory After All

[geomon]

During the same time, our predators were getting faster and stronger and we were getting....smarter???

Who said our predators were getting faster and stronger?

You have evidence to support that assertion?

Sure, if you live in the modern world with the internet and taxi cabs and books and shit, that'd be a big deal. But if you're some ancestor of ours out in the wild, you'd be pretty low on the totem pole, so to speak, in terms of survivability. So how is it we did it? Before intelligence we had every disadvantage.

So do rabbits. We could climb trees and survived for several million years in trees before the jungle changed to savannah.

Which would you take in a fight: an unarmed man or a bear? a gorilla? a crocodile? a shark? a dog? I wouldn't want to face any of these alone in the wild.

You discount the advantange that prey have: rapid gestation and ovulation cycles.

Did you factor this in when you created your argument?

We were fundamentally physically unequipped to survive in the wild 3.5M years ago.

We didn't look anything like we do now 3.5 million years ago.

Domestication is not evolution.

Domestication is an evolutionary mechanism.

We have domesticated cattle, not caused a genetic mutation that makes them different from previous generations.

You have evidence to support your conclusions?

Close and distant relatives of the domesticated cow continue to survive in the wild, human intervention or not.

Really? Where?

Here in the US there is only the Longhorn and it shares few traits with the domesticated varieties we raise for beef.

Buffalo roamed the plains of North America for millenia before humans with no problems.

By sheer number.

How are they doing now?

Essentialism is a lie.

[Inoshiro]

"Women and men are different. I know that is not a popular opinion, but the boobies and the having kids thing kinda comes to mind."

That's a nice, provable biological difference.

"Maybe I'm just traditional or old fashioned, but I see women/females as being more nurturing, emotional, and less competitive and authoritarian than men."

Now, is that a product of biology, or a product of the surroundings in which a woman is raised? You don't know. No one does.

Women and men are equivalent in every sense that matters. To say that someone is aggresive because they have a penis is the same thing as saying someone is pleasant because they have a vagina. To say that someone is good with money because they are a jew, or that someone is less intelligent because they are black -- these are all features of a theory called essentialism. Essentialism says that someone is a certain way because of their biology, not their own free will, their experiences, or how they were raised.

I think we should take a serious look at how women are raised and how we expect them to behave (Google search for pleasant; note how the 2nd hit is for a doll maker called "American Girl"!), rather than use biological means to justify differences. Essentialism is a lie that people like Adolf Hitler used to justify terrible attrocities. For you to pipe up in support of essentialism is a mark of how little you have researched your own opinions.

Re:Essentialism is a lie.

[fyngyrz]

Essentialism is a lie that people like Adolf Hitler used to justify terrible attrocities. For you to pipe up in support of essentialism is a mark of how little you have researched your own opinions.

That's way too generalized to reflect reality.

Biological differences can (and do) lead to differences in emotional depth and "emotional intelligence", cognitive abilities, athletic potentials both realized and nascent, immune system / disease resistance, height, intelligence, secondary sexual characteristics, bone structure, child bearing / rearing capabilities, eye color, bone density, resistance to pain... the list is endless because it includes everything.

It is politically correct nonsense to say that biological differences, miscast in PC terms as "essentialism", are non-existant or irrelevant. In real human terms, differences matter when they are significant; and they they are certainly significant when they are pivotal, or fundamental, in degree with regard to a particular situation. If you ignore differences, you may be shooting yourself right in the foot; taking them too seriously when it is not warranted can just as easily lead to problems. The bottom line is you have to think about every situation and decide if the differences at hand are relevant to the problems and issues at hand. The answer, however, is not to declare that observing differences is "essentialism."

Albert Einstein was not the "equal" of any random Down's syndrome child you care to pick. And why? Bloody biology, that's why. Likewise, women are not and never will be, barring genetic manipulation, "the same" as men. The expectation that they should be is absolutely ludicrous. This does not rule out any particular role or capability; what it says is that the fit to a particular cognitive, physical, emotional, or artistic target is going to be different between men and women because of biological differences. This, in turn, should encourage us to consider every situation as a unique challenge to meet it with the best fit we can. Not to cleave to some politically correct but scientifically bewildered mode of thinking.

To which, of course, we can add environmental influences from nutrition to parenting and schooling. The very concept that people are, or even could be, "the same" is just plain medieval.

There's nothing like politically correct psychobabble to blind us to reality.

Re:As one of those fundamentalists...

[dancpsu]

The belief of how anything outside of the universe behaves, whether it is a theoretical quantum metauniverse, God, a giant bowl of pasta, etc. is an untestable belief. Since the universe had a beginning at the Big Bang, something had to start it, and that something, being necessarily outside of the universe, cannot be tested.

The usefulness of an underlying philosophy to science is undoubtable though. The philosophy that the universe is ordered has helped aid scientific discovery (until quantum physics). The philosophy that the universe has a beginning and is constantly changing was fought against hard by the majority of the scientific community who believed in the philosophy of a relatively static universe until the data was too much for it to stand. The philosophy that evolution governs all biology has worked for quite some time, but it is a philosophy, and it is possible, like Newtonian physics, that it governs only a part of the full field. ID proposes more uniqueness and order to living organisms than evolution currently allows. As a guiding philosophy, it lives or dies on the biological discoveries in the future.

A governing philosophy to part of science should be taught, but not as a scientific fact, and a historical view of the different philosophies that have been successful and discarded would be as useful as teaching the current scientific understanding of reality.