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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."
I guess some zealots just won't trust anything that comes from Apple. Sad, really. :)
Seriously, I don't know many Christians, even young-earth creationists, who'd actively go after companies that promoted this exhibit. Jerry Falwell's group might bitch a bit, but they do that anyway.
Maybe ask them why they're opposed to evolution when even the pope (both the current one and the last one) accepts it.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
None of the high tech companies can belly up to the bar and pick up the tab? That's just sad. I especially think the biotech companies have a duty to pick sides here. Where would some of them be without genetic engineering, proof of evolution if I've ever seen it? Genzyme, Biogen I'm looking at you! Or a company like Intel. What are christians going to give up computers because a chip maker sponsored the right side of the debate? Not after what the Vatican just said. So a small handful of fanatics clinging to dogma are going to push us all around with threats of boycots. I believe that's part of the definition of terrorism.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
show me a bacteria that has become a fish
Go fishing.
Catch a fish.
There you go.
(Okay, that was a flip answer. Here's a serious one.)
The timescale for major evolutionary change in multicellular life is so enormous that we're not going to see bacteria evolving into fish. However, I've noticed that when creationists use this argument, which turns up in many different forms, they have no idea how diverse microbial life actually is. When you say "they evolve, but they remain a bacteria," I think you have no idea just how different from each other various forms of bacteria actually are. There's more difference, in fact, between various strains of bacteria that we have observed evolving into each other than there is between a fish and a human being.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
"A prayer in a public school. God has no place within these walls, just like facts don't have a place within an organized religion." -From The Simpsons
So, that's a glib answer, but when it comes right down to it, I'm hard pressed to agree they're doing anything wrong.
Personally, I'm an atheist, and a believer in the scientific process. ID, in my view, is a load of claptrap. And while I might join you in rolling my eyes as a Sunday school goes on about such unscientific nonsense as "irreducible complexity", you must understand I have a similar reaction when someone goes on about a virgin birth - and I suspect you would not share my contempt, then.
If people want to argue vociferously that faith-based concepts like ID should not be taught in science class (and I agree they should not), then it's hard to get too worked up when they teach them in church. I won't condemn a church for teaching ID within their walls, any more than I would condemn them for the host of other un-scientific explanations and teachings they offer.
The opinion above is fiction. Any similarity to real opinions, including facts and logic, is purely coincidental.
You're missing a, er, fundamental point, which is something the original poster at least hinted at. There are many different kinds of fundamentalism, and your gross simplification of "religious extremist rednecks" is completely inaccurate. They represent a small (but significant) percentage of the overall hostility to science, which comes from numerous different political viewpoints, socio-economic strata, and whatever other categories you threw in. For instance, I work at a non-profit that promotes the value of science, and the overwhelming majority of death threats, harrassment, etc., etc., that we see comes from secular northern environmentalists, animal rights activists, and so on -- in a word, the complete opposite of your idiotic stereotype.
FWIW, since you bring up the prospect of leaving the U.S. for "greener pastures," there are huge concentrations of anti-science leftists here in Canada, and overall a large degree of hostility to science as with other social democratic paradises (e.g. look at Europe's wider social reaction to genetic modification).
Educate yourself!
Fuck it