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Evolution Named Scientific Achievement of 2005
lazy_hp writes "The BBC reports that research into evolution's inner working has been named rtop science achievement of 2005 From the article: 'The prestigious US journal Science publishes its top 10 list of major endeavours at the end of each year. The number one spot was awarded jointly to several studies that illuminated the intricate workings of evolution. The announcement comes in the same week that a US court banned the teaching of intelligent design in classrooms.'"
Or on any shoreline.
Just look on the horizon with a telescope -- you'll see a ship's mast come into view before the deck. Didn't this strike anyone as odd back then?
the ancient greeks did for sure. And the dimentions they gave was pretty close.
r se.htm /it's elephants all the way down
In fact during the middle ages most people I understand thought it round as well.
The middle-eastern view seems to be that it was flat.
http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/ThreeTieredUnive
Are you falling into the trap of confusing the colloquial definition of "theory" for the scientific definition? The Theory of Evolution is the basis of modern biology. You want to throw out modern biology because you think Evolution is not a fact? Do you have similar problems with the Theory of Electromagnetism being taught as "fact"? Does the fact that light exhibits behavior of a wave in some instances and as a particle in other instances invalidate the "old and outdated" Theory of Electromagnetism?
Are you also aware that ID teaches that the idea of speciation is wrong, that the various species were created essentially whole in an instant by an "Intelligent Designer? That is, birds did not develop from dinosaurs, but magically appeared with feathers, beaks, etc.
As John E. Jones III wrote in his judgement in Kitzmiller v. Dover:
You really need to get a hold of the full text of the judgement. It's quite an interesting read.
The Catholic church versus Galileo has nothing on today's evolution zealots.
The people that you call "zealots" seem to fall into non-mutually exclusive two groups:
1) Those that do not want the government to endorse a certain religious viewpoint.
2) Those that do not want children to receive a substandard education.
If you want to see zealotry in action I again highly recommend that you read the actual judgement. John E. Jones III outlines the zealotry of the school board and takes them to task for their zealotry.
To this date, no one has proposed a plausible alternative to the Theory of Evolution that hold up under the Scientific Method. Those people that you call zealots are generally those people that insist on reason, logic, critical thinking, and most of all, facts. If a devotion to facts makes one a zealot, then, please, call me a zealot.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Like with most things, some slashdotters like me are being *extra* nerdy and insisting that mere theological theories don't get touted as fact. Evolution, having replaced "God did it" with "Random Chance did it" is particularily bad at this; as is the claim that ID is not science because of some incredibly arbitrary and subjective rules about who is a scientist and what a science is. Thus the argument every time it shows up.
BTW, it has nothing at all to do with creationism-
Oh, you are so wrong it hurts.
First of all, "design" and "create" are synonyms. It has everything to do with creationism, it's just cleverly worded to avoid any direct mention of the specific religion that it is meant to support, in order to attempt to sneak it into public schools despite a constitutional ban of such shenanigans. Hence the ruling to that effect.
ID is not science by the very definition of science! "the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding", ID is based on ignorance and misunderstanding, it's the entire basis of the argument: "There's bit we don't know or understand yet, so a magical, invisible hand did it!"
Just because it's a lie supporting something you agree with doesn't make it true.
You can't take the sky from me...
No, it just saddens me - I wonder how much better they could have done without it.
Or do you just assume that, if someone believes in religion, they're supporters of ID and incapable of rational thought?
Supporters of ID, no. As for rational thought, not incapable, but by definition they think irrationally more often than is good.
I don't understand the anti-religous crusade so many people seem to take on as their own little holy war. Why the hell can't you leave me alone? You believe what you want, and I'll believe what I want. I won't teach your kids to believe what I do, and you can just stay away from mine.
Because you're wasting your life, and you're not seeing the glory of the universe that's out there. And you're doing it for such a stupid reason. When you're walking down the street and see someone banging their head against a building, you want to stop them.
If you want to talk about testable hypotheses, we can do that. You produce evidence contrary to my understanding of the universe, and I'll change my understanding. I'd hope you could do the same thing.
Of course. And if you're doing that that's halfway there. But if you start believing random things without evidence, your worldview's not going to make a lot of sense.
But if you want to get into a contest of faiths, don't even bother. And don't think that atheism isn't a faith: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You can prove to me that we as a species evolved, ultimately, from a tiny pile of organic slime clinging to a rock in some antediluvian sea. Check. You can't prove to me that no god exists, any more than I can prove to you one does.
Just like the fairies at the bottom of my garden. I haven't seen them because they turn invisible whenever humans are looking at them, of course. Occam's razor and assuming the absence of anything that doesn't have a reason to exist is the only way to get a reasonable view of things.
Your railing against religion (and everyone else's) as a whole (as opposed to railing against statements made based on religion that are demonstrably false, which is, of course, appropriate) is no better than any other zealot demanding that his religion is right and everyone else's is wrong.
We at least have some grounds for this - "religion is dumb because this religious person said this dumb thing" is fallacious but better than "my religion is better than yours" with no reason at all.
I am trolling
Odd ideas will get support with evidence, it was only ~10 years ago that the idea of many ulcers being caused by bacteria was laughed at. Now it's accepted as fact. Creationism has never had a shred of evidence going for it, the promoters spend their time bashing science instead of looking for proof to support their ideas. Actually if memory serves the Discovery Institute(?) was formed to get said evidence. They've come up with nothing over the past decade and instead now attack science.
Just out of curiosity, what's your future PhD in?
Trolling is a art,