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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."
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.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
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.
As in those presenting the current crop of alternate theories have a leg to stand on? This is really news to me.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
I think Darwin's theory needs to evolve to survive in its ever changing environment.
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
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?
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.
Uh, as long as the exhibit is accurate in that Darwin had an anti-religous agenda.
Care to back that up with some evidence (from sources other than the creationist research orgs)?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Darwin Exhibit, huh. Does it include the evolution of DRM on audio CD's, and the roadkill *coughSonycough* along the way?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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!
Polls get overstated all the time- and this CBS poll was most certainly distorted in both results and leading questions. Another possible interpretation of the *same poll* could lead you to believe 75% of Americans support evolution and 51% dispute the idea of spontaneous genesis.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
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 correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Now only the geeks will learn about it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Carries no weight with them, insofar as the vast majority of people likely to raise a stink about this kind of thing are evangelicals and not Catholics - in fact, there's a certain amount of overlap between anti-evolution folks and anti-Catholic folks. For them, the fact that the Church does not require a literal reading of Genesis of Catholics is just one more piece of evidence that the RC Church is the Whore of Babylon. All kinds of worms under that particular rock...
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"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.
Check before you post next time. Darwin was Christian - and literalist, at that - for most of the time he was working on his theory. Even after he renounced Christianity in 1851, he was more of an agnostic than anything else. He even kept helping with parish work - hardly the actions of someone with an "anti-religious agenda".
To know recursion, you must first know recursion.
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.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Don't you just love intelligent design, such flawless logic!!! Reminds me of this ever more relevant excert from one of the great movies of all time:
BEDEVERE:
Tell me. What do you do with witches?
CROWD:
Burn! Burn them up! Burn!...
BEDEVERE:
And what do you burn apart from witches?
VILLAGER #1:
More witches!
VILLAGER #2:
Wood!
BEDEVERE:
So, why do witches burn?
[pause]
VILLAGER #3:
B--... 'cause they're made of... wood?
BEDEVERE:
Good! Heh heh.
CROWD:
Oh, yeah. Oh.
BEDEVERE:
So, how do we tell whether she is made of wood?
VILLAGER #1:
Build a bridge out of her.
BEDEVERE:
Ah, but can you not also make bridges out of stone?
RANDOM:
Oh, yeah. True. Uhh...
BEDEVERE:
Does wood sink in water?
VILLAGER #1:
No. No.
VILLAGER #2:
No, it floats! It floats!
VILLAGER #1:
Throw her into the pond!
CROWD:
The pond! Throw her into the pond!
BEDEVERE:
What also floats in water?
VILLAGER #1:
Bread!
VILLAGER #2:
Apples!
VILLAGER #3:
Uh, very small rocks!
VILLAGER #1:
Cider!
VILLAGER #2:
Uh, gra-- gravy!
VILLAGER #1:
Cherries!
VILLAGER #2:
Mud!
VILLAGER #3:
Uh, churches! Churches!
VILLAGER #2:
Lead! Lead!
ARTHUR:
A duck!
BEDEVERE:
Exactly. So, logically...
VILLAGER #1:
If... she... weighs... the same as a duck,... she's made of wood.
BEDEVERE:
And therefore?
CROWD:
A witch! A witch!...
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
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?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
At the time he developed the theory of natural selection, Darwin was a Christian who had actually studied for the clergy, though probably for career reasons rather than a strong inclination to preach. He was never anti-religion and in fact, he delayed publication of his work in part because he realized the philosophical implications of his work. He eventually identified himself as agnostic.
So when Christ said "I am the door" (John 10:9), do you suppose he had hinges and a doorknob?
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
The evolution theory is a theory of processes, not a description of each step.
Of course there are some issues which might need a closer look, such as the Cambrian Explosion. And of course some more subtheories such as punctated equilibrium and convergent evolution might be proposed and be incorporated. You can discuss if evolution is a more a result of selection on the level of genes or on the level of populations. But those things are not "holes". Whatever the outcome of the scientific debate on these issues, it will not mean a fundamental change to the evolution theory as it is understood now.
So what are the holes you are talking about?
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
Darwin in no way had an anti-religous agenda. He even considered becoming an Anglican priest when he was younger. Sure, after he developed the theory of natural selection he became an agnostic, as many (but not all), people who really understand the theory since also have, but he didn't discover natural selection as part of any agenda other than the furthering of biology
The best example is the shape of the Earth. To the ancient Hebrew tribes, their cosmology being based on Mesopotomian notions, the Earth was a flat disc covered by a crystal dome. This is seen plainly in the cosmology put forth in Genesis 1. However, by Greco-Roman times, the spherical shape of the Earth was well known, and no Jew of that period would have doubted that. Thus the older Hebrew cosmology could not be seen as literally true, so Genesis was not read literally.
It is very unfortunate that a certain small breed of Christian has decided to rewrite two thousand years of theology and in the process turn their holy book into an object of derision. A literal reading of Genesis makes it clearly false, and to make it jive, the Literalist ends up having to find interpretations so strained and inane that it undermines their whole position.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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?
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
You are correct about the most long-lived civilizations placing an emphasis on education.
I think it's worth pointing out that for much of human history those teaching and preserving literacy have been the religious.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Please don't blame/insult the rednecks. Generally the religious extremists think they are above the rednecks. On top of that, my cousin who has talked about himself being a redneck is the least religious extremist on my mom's side of the family besides me. My father's side of the family is mostly Catholics, so they've got the religious side down, but apparently the pope has come down on the side of evolution. My mom's side was Catholic, but have mostly scattered to various apparently unaffiliated churches.
As an aside, intelligent design has many interesting philosophical points, and that's where it belongs, philosopy, not biology. Unfortunately Philosopy education in the United States is poor as well, which contributes to the problem.
The Illuminati.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
It's understandable that some animal-rights groups might be against the treatment of some animals by research scientists. They're more against animal testing than they are against science as a whole, for instance. The religious extremists, on the other hand, are often completely against science. They're not against a very specific technique, but against the whole of science.
Again, you're confused. Many Europeans do not resent genetic research. They do not, however, believe it to be correct to use such knowledge in ways that would violate basic human rights. We're talking about using such knowledge to create slaves, for instance. Or to dangerously modify crops.
The people you deem as "anti-science leftists" (many of whom are extremely conservative or libertarian) are often very pro-science. They take a stand against what may very well be considered unjustifiable use of scientific knowledge. We're talking about taking a stand against genetically modified crops, animal testing, and so forth. They're not against the entirety of science, unlike many religious fundamentalists.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
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?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
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.
Freedom is not increased by mere diminuation of government. Anarchy is freedom for the strong and slavery for the weak.
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
You get what you pay for, fellas.
If you post it, they will read.
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.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Now there's an Idea...
Since the Pharma industry is based heavily on biology and bio-chemistry and in turn on theories of evolution, maybe we could start a campaign to equate medical drug use with support of evolution. Hit the zealots where they live (literally) by accusing them of supporting, by act, the theory of evolution if they take any medical drugs. Suggest if they really do not support evolution, they should forgo their medicine.
Then sit and watch the fallout. Some will bow to self preservation, continue using their medicine and dissapear from public view. Others might actually stop using their drugs. Either way, they are less likely to be a public problem.
I'm only suggesting this to the most vocal public critics. Hit them where they live, their public image. Alas, the probable effect is that lots of little old ladies would take it too literally and stop taking their own medicine in support. That would be a bad situation, even if it was of their own making.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Then answer this, smart guy.
Sure, #######.
Show me a single-celled organism evolve into a multi-celled organism.
zygote ==> blastocyte.
It is exactly parallel to some essential evolutionary steps, and it happens to everyone!
There are these leaps in evolution that requires some magical altering of how life works at all that evolution just can't explain.
This claim is completely baseless. The leaps of evolution are exactly what does explain how life works. It is, so far, the only theory that adequately explains empirical data on speciation and the differentiation of lifeforms. Just the patterns that ID loves to refer to as *designed*, just the challenges that ID refers to as *irreducible* are the strongest corroboration of the theory of evolution.
You can't expect anyone to believe that you have flowers that rely on bees to fertilize them and bees that rely on flowers to feed on that have managed to "evolve" from some roots.
There are several problems here, beginning with the expectation of belief. No one expects you to *believe* anything. You believe in a God, you accept a theory. An essential insight that you miss is the fact that evolution is opportunistic, not deterministic. Bees eat flower sap because it is there and few other organisms compete for it. Thousands of species of flowers have nothing to do with bees, relying on beetles, ants or birds.
How droll that we are still having this pseudo-debate. I thought this subject tired and thoroughly vanquished thirty years ago in high-school. Now we are further behind than ever. America has been ever superstitious and resistant to authority (scientific or political, even religious). It is the infantile wing of American anti-authoritarianism, and the charlatans that do not scruple to pander to it, which feeds this disease of faith-based doubting.
illegitimii non ingravare
Evolution does not guarantee that any structure will form. Intelligence is one solution to a particular set of problems, but the overwhelming number of organisms on this planet survive without even possessing more than one cell. However, that being said, intelligence of any kind will give an organism some specific benefits as far as judging, measuring and accumulating information about the environment. Rerun the tape from say, 500 million years ago, and there's no guarantee that you would have any organism with a brain larger than a few thousand neurons. But once you do have organisms with nerve bundles capable of not only receiving sensory data, but manipulating it, then such a species will overcome some of the barriers to such an expensive adaptation (remember, all structures require energy to develop and maintain, which is eye the biomass of this planet is overwhelmingly unicellular). As each member of a population is going to have some variation, some members will have larger or more complicated neural networks, and providing that such a feature of the primitive brain makes those particular members even slightly more likely to survive and reproduce, then, statistically, you will start to see brain size and complexity increase.
This is precisely what we see with hominid evolution. The earliest bipedal apes had brains little larger than a chimpanzee's. As we can see from modern chimps, a larger brain isn't necessarily required for survival. But for early hominids bipedalism meant a new environment, new pressures that a larger brain would make individual members more likely to reproduce. To loosely paraphrase Richard Dawkins, half a brain is better than no brain at all.
You seem to assume that there is some direction to evolution, that somehow a brain must be an inevitable organ, or that human intelligence is some necessary result of some ladder of evolution. Well, it isn't. It's simply good fortune on our part that a larger neural organ in some distant ancestor gave that critter a slight edge in the survival game. Play the tape again, and you might not have anything more complex than a planarian.
But evolution is not a shit-at-the-wall discipline. It makes some key predictions which have been confirmed numerous times since Darwin's day. The faunal progression was the earliest confirmation, but is no longer the most important. The key evidence for evolution now is the molecular data, which clearly shows, as was predicted, that all extant organisms fit within a nested hierarchy with its root to be found in a single common ancestor. With each species we analyze the genome of, we find this key observation only bolstered. All life on this planet came from a single common ancestral population, probably 3.5 to 3.9 billion years ago, though horizontal gene transfer means that it won't be a single ancestor, but rather a small bush of unicellular organisms swapping genes.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
People frequently confuse "thinking really hard about data" with "doing science." You can certainly think rationally and logically about the world around you and come to the conclusion that belief in the supernatural is warranted. That doesn't mean you're a nutcase. It does, however, mean that you've ventured into an area in which science is of no help and results of scientific study will be meaningless. If we allow reasoning about the supernatural into science classes instead of philosophy classes where it belongs, we will fail to teach our students the distinction between the two.
Again, this doesn't mean that the philosophers who think about these things are stupid or wrong or that science is the sole arbiter of the truth. It just means that science covers only a limited subset of what philosophy and logic cover (albeit it does so with phenomenal success) and that we do our children a disservice by not pointing that out.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
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)
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
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.
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
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Why must materialist philosophy be taught in science class?...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.
I'm not sure how anything non-material COULD be taught in a science class. Science is the study of nature and the material world, it says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of supernatural forces or entities. Supernatural explanations might well be correct, but they aren't measurable or testable, so in the context of science there simply isn't much to discuss. The alternative is that every measurement you take and experiment you perform has to be disclaimed as possibly supernatural in result, which again may be correct but doesn't add anything to the discussion.
Arguments over the validity of our senses, the possibility of being deceived by the material world and other existentialist dilemmas are certainly good for students to have, but they belong in the category of formal logic and philosophy, not science.
It strikes me as someone complaining that their physical education class doesn't also cover mental health topics -- that isn't the subject of the class! There is no judgement being placed on the value of mental health simply because your gym teacher doesn't discuss it -- indeed, most gym teachers and mental health professionals would agree that a healthy body and mind complement each other. Trying to shoehorn a discussion about depression into the rules of baseball would be as pointless as discussing supernatural forces in a science class.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
So you support my point.
Everyone who read our exchange is laughing at this point. I punched holes in your first argument and now you claim I support you.
I say 100,00 years ago the first signs of human intellidence appear, you say over the course of 3.5 million years. How is it we survived? According to the theory of evolution and "survival of the fittest", we shouldn't be here. But we are. Why?
We survived because our intelligence, developed over the course of 3.5 million years, advanced faster than our predators in that same time frame.
Again, you should be getting this from an anthropology text.
Look at it another way: wouldn't certain animal species that use elaborate mechanisms (think peacock) to attract mates also be more attractive to predators and easier to catch and kill? I mean a peacock can't do shit. *I* can catch one and I'm fat lazy bastard. How come they survived? And how exactly and why did they develop the way they did?
Your statement assumes that peacocks of today existed as they did before humans began domesticating animals. If you are looking for an animal that can't protect itself from predators, look at cattle. They can barely give birth to a calf due to the fact that humans have protected them from predators for thousands of years.
Evolution in action.
And don't get me wrong. I don't think reading some 4,000 year old book did it. There is some other explanation for it, and I leave it up to the scientists to figure those things out. The theory of evolution is a start, but it IS flawed or in another sense incomplete.
I would suggest reading Origins of the Species first before claiming evolution doesn't exist. It can be found here.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
As I understand the "problem" with Evolution as described by Darwin is that it may accurately describe what we observe, but it has no predictive power.
Then your understanding is very flawed. Evolution in fact has quite strong predictive power. For example, evolutionary theory is very useful in predicting the number of harmful genes in a particular animal's genome.
In fact one of the greatest trimuphs of science was the use by Darwin himself of evolution to predict existance of certain species of insects by examining the morphology of plants that they would pollinate.
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.
Think global, act loco
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.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I see women/females as being ... less competitive
Ho, ho, ho.
You, my friend, have apparently never encountered more than one woman at a time.
Women are _way_ more competitive than men are in regards to their social pecking order.
The oldest science I have direct experience with comes in the form of Qigong which is an ancient medicinal discipline dating back to at least 4000 years ago. Then again, the modern "scientific" medical community has laughed derisively and dismissed 4000 years of such "science" as nonsense. Things have begun to change recently largely do to the preponderance of anecdotal evidence citing dramatically improved health that correlates with Qigong. As a scientist, I am not saying it is causal; I am just saying there is enough of a correlation that people have stopped laughing.
So China has had a scientific tradition for 4000 years, in which case, they may win the prize for longest lasting scientific civilization, or if you are one of the derisive laughers they are just barely stepping into the scientific world and Europe with only a couple hundred years headstart which is nothing to a civilization that has spanned 4000 years. Then again, many different governments have come and gone in China in that time. Has the society survived that? I'd say that as a nation, the Chinese have had a continuous cultural identity that entire time so, yes.
As far as intelligent design goes, these people are not saying that the scientific method is crap. Not as far as I can tell, and if some are, they are the minority idiots that no one needs to worry about because they are so incapable of rational thought they are not likely a threat to anyone other than themselves. The smart people that support intelligent design are just saying that they believe there are gaps too large in the evolutionary path to be accounted for by Darwinian evolution, as in: over time mutation and natural selection lead to species differentiation in harmony with the organisms habitat. They are not saying that science is crap. They are saying that they feel there are gaps in science that need to be accounted for and are not yet.
I think every scientist worth his or her salt would readily acknowledge that there are gaps all over the place in science. That is what drives us to further discovery. Our curiosity about that gaps. And the intelligent design people are right, if they are saying there are gaps in evolutionary theory. Damn right there are. Did Darwin figure out every evolutionary trick up Nature's sleeve in his lifetime? Have we filled in all the gaps in a couple hundred years, keeping in mind that Nature has been playing this game for hundreds of millions of years at least? No way.
If we some day find a periodic genetic record of a protozoan evolving into homo sapiens, then yes, we could certainly make a very conclusive argument. But I think anyone will agree that it is absurdly improbable that we can do that. Which means that scientists have to take a leap of faith just like any religious person. Every theory or law of physics is a leap of faith. "What if this is true," asks a scientist. Then they go devise real world experiments to show conclusively that the supposition is true. Intelligent design people are saying that Darwin's theory is not supported by enough real world experiments to show a protazoan evolving into you.
Can't really argue with them. Any scientist that discounts God because there is no experiment to conclusively demonstrate existance is as dumb as a person discounting science because it does not conclusively show that my Great^10^100 Grandfather was an amoeba.
"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.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I've posted this before, in one of the threads a few weeks ago, but there was an article in American Scientist about Intelligent Design that looks at the larger picture. A key bit is this:
Evolution is just the beginning, folks. This is about replacing science with religion.I'd like to let them know that by "not taking sides", they've actually taken the side of the Creationists, by acknowledging that there is some validity to the debate.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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.
"Scientists don't change their minds, they just die." -- Max Planck