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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.'"
Nominated for 2006, GRAVITY!!!!
-- There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Gravity to be named the top scientific achievment of 2006. Expect the contest for 2007 to be between the invention of Algebra and the discovery of atoms.
Not that I support Intelligent Design (I think it's hokum, personally), but I can't help thinking this decision is politically-motivated. Doesn't mean it's not deserved, but it sure is convenient, coming on the heels of the ID court decision.
Aw, what do I know?
Check out my world simulator thingy.
I thought the mail client Evolution was named "Scientific Achievement", until I got past the headline...
And, hello -- how about the HapMap?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
For example,"I think the planets should be renamed because they're named after fake gods."
Given that you Christians believe in one God (or is it three?), won't it get rather confusing if you name all the planets after him?
You won't be able to tell Uranus from Urelbow.
The elements that created everything had to come from somewhere.
Where did the Intelligent being come from? The elements that comprise the being had to come from somewhere.
Whatever you reply to this "he always existed" or whatever, is the same reply I'll give you to you about where the elements came from. It's just as logical as yours.
"I think the planets should be renamed because they're named after fake gods."
You are free to call the planets whatever you wish.
But clearly what you really want is the power (through government dictate) to force others to use names that are approved by your particular religion.
I hear a lot of Christians complain about how oppressed they are.
In the end the complaints turn out to be about wanting the power to control others.
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?
Maybe that was a Good Thing, but should decisions like identifying the Best Scientific Achievement of a year and medical decisions of vast importance be something we leave open to the whims of politics? I realize that in this case there was no "buckling" from pressure but it apparently was intended to reflect political shifts of our time. Whatever the case, it just doesn't sit well with me.
Are you deliberately feeding the fire, or are you genuinely that close-minded?
Why is it scary to you that so many geeks might actually believe religion? An awful lot of brilliant math and science has been performed by people who firmly believed religion...does that terrify you, too?
Or do you just assume that, if someone believes in religion, they're supporters of ID and incapable of rational thought?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
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
As a liberal Christian, I have a certain passionate hatred for creationism. I despise creationism because it makes Christians look like a bunch of narrow-minded idiots. For example, I was reading in a Christian newspaper an article about the ICR, which stated the earth was young, and cited four reasons for this. All four reasons [1] have been long-since refuted over at Talkorigins.org or the Evolution Wiki. I was able to refute three of the four points off of the top of my head.
I have seen creationist after creationist come to this Creation-Evolution debate board I lurk on, tell us the Earth must be young because of XXX and that we are all wrong. Once we present to them some scientific evidence that the Earth is old, they get real quiet real fast.
Basically, believing in an old Earth is only possible when a creationist is in a serious state of denial. Case in point: The only people who believe in a young Earth have a religious reason for doing so. Many Christians believe in an old Earth; not one atheist believes in a young Earth.
[1] The original offending article can be seen here. The refutations can be found here (just because you can come up with one case where we got different dates doesn't mean the 99+% of cases where we get the same age via different techniques is invalid) here, here, and here (the refutation is for creationist claims for c14 levels in coals, but the process in question can make diamonds have c14 atoms also).
"Scientifically proven" is an oxymoron. No scientific theory has ever been proved. Ever.
Yes there is. The more intellegent people are, the less likely they are to be religious. Pointers to plenty of studies that show this can be found here. The fact that there are indeed famous intelligent and religious people is not a proof of the contrary (as any intelligent person will know :-).
Besides, when refering to people like Da Vinci, one has to take into account the society that they lived in and the corresponding education that they recieved.
Linux user since early January 1992.
Judge John Jones disagres. A direct quote from his 139 page ruling:
ID is all about religion. It was made by the religious, for the religious and to be religious. Any debate about ID is a debate about religion. This fact is unescapable.
There is a problem with evolution, in that darwinian THEORY cannot explain where life came from, only how it continued to change.... I mean how could DNA or the process of cell division 'evolve' if evolution itself requires cells to divide and carry on it's genetic blueprint.
Evolution, when combined with other disiplines, can explain every facet of evolution. It's all in the numbers. the sheer amount of oppertunies for mutation, combined with natural selection, ensure that processes are constantly being refined and streamlined for their enviornment.
And yes this process is completely random. That is in fact its primary strength. Through random mutations, organisims have a higher chance of adapting to any changes in their ecosystem, no matter how it changes.
May the Maths Be with you!
This comment has been sent a 'cease and desist' order. Please refrain from discussions regarding 'Intelligent Falling' as it is covered by our recently granted patent.
Gekido's Lair
I think the dismissive phrase "just meat" implies that there isn't much to it. In fact you can implement some incredibly cool things using "just meat". Intelligent life, for example.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I wonder how "Evolution" feels about the award - 4 billion years of hard work, and now it gets recognition.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
I agree with you. To be pedantic though, I think scientific objection to ID is Falsifiability. The ID pushers make few claims that we can observe. Fortunately, they do say that the earth is only ~6000 years old, something we can measure objectively.
The social problem with ID is that the people doing the pushing are religious bigots. Make no mistake about it. They're as open-minded as the taliban. They don't care whether it's scientific. They're not interested in a dialog or the truth. They have a message for you and their only interest in you depends on your acceptance of that message.
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
it was an unplanned, unguided and random process.
I think this statement with regards to evolution is not correct. True it is unplanned and random, but the process, as a process is not unguided. Each creature evolves with its evironment as a guide.
Imagine some organism in a world full of oxygen and very little carbon dioxide. Let's say this organism has three offspring (A), (B) and (C). (A) is just like the original organism. (B) uses more carbon dioxide. (C) uses more oxygen and less carbon dioxide. (A) will continue just as the original organism did, (B) will be worse off, and (C) will be better off. Thus (C) and its offspring will be better suited to live in the environment.
The guide is the world the organisms live in. That world may have been created randomly. Each particular mutation may arise randomly. But the process of evolution for each species is guided by the environment of that species.
You also say that life is a statistical anomoly. This seems nontrivially related to the inverse gambler's fallacy. Further, there are hundreds of billions of solar systems. Many of them probably have planets (we have already found some, I suspect we will find that solar systems are more and more likely as we gain the ability to see such things). If the odds of life forming on its own is, let's say, 100,000,000,000 to 1 against (which seems very generous to the people who think life is unlikely, given experiments with the common elements which form the building blocks of life and lightning), and there are 100,000,000,000 planets. On average, there will be life somewhere. Further, the only people that will notice will be from that planet (because there won't be life anywhere else!). They may think themselves extremely special and favored by the universe. They would be wrong.
If you're going to claim that basic life (single celled organisms, let's say) may occur reasonably often but in order to evolve there needs to be guidance in the mutation process, I'm just going to claim that the right environment needs to be in place to encourage mutations with the appropriate features. And given the mutations I can speculate with some accuracy (or at least, historically we have been able to) about the conditions at the time which made such mutations useful. This makes my theory bear extra fruit while you simply put some being in and say "it did it", and that tells us nothing extra. So even if the theories were otherwise equivalent in terms of their predictive power, I can predict things about the environment after the fact, and you cannot. This seems to be an extra point in favor of my theory all other things being equal, which, obviously I don't think they are.
Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.
Feel free to take four minutes and eight seconds to learn precisely how the human eye probably evolved.
If you can handle the four minutes and eight seconds, perhaps you'd be willing to do some reading about how a bacterial flagellum could form without a designer.
I'm also sure you've heard the name Behe before. Did you know that in 2001 Michael Behe admitted that his work had a "defect" and does not actually address "the task facing natural selection." Futhermore, irreducible complexity is rejected by the majority of the scientific community. The main concerns with the concept are that it utilises an argument from ignorance, that Behe fails to provide a testable hypothesis, and that there is a lack of evidence in support of the concept. As such, irreducible complexity is seen by the supporters of evolutionary theory as an example of creationist pseudoscience and amounts to a "God of the Gaps" argument.
Can ID answer the following questions?
If you can't answer the last one at the very least, stop reading now. Go back to the link above, click on it, and spend the four minutes and eight seconds educating yourself.
The point to those questions is that NONE of them can be answered with ID. Can't be predicted with. Can't be tested with. None. Zero.
But do you know what can? Evolution, every one of them.
That said, while you accuse others of not understanding what ID actually is, I contend that you do not understand what evolution is.
First of all, the article this discussion is linked to references how scientists have learned new "specifics of how life evolved from a scientific point of view..."
Second, evolution has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with how life was created on what was once only a molten planet. Nothing. At all. Evolution is the transition -- of a population -- from one form of life to others forms of life over (usually long periods of) time.
Creation of life where there is no life is what is known as abiogenesis, not evolution. Now stop what you're doing! I can see you reaching for that reply button and Googling for references to the Miller-Urey experiments from the 1950s.
Stop it! You didn't even read that abiogenesis link, did you? I didn't think so. Nothing I can say can convince you to if your mind is already made up (read: clouded by mindless dogma). However I will leave you with one thing so that you can look it up yourself and do the research.
Abiogenesis experiments conducted by Dr. Sidney Fox. Don't even b
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Why is it scary to you that so many geeks might actually believe religion? An awful lot of brilliant math and science has been performed by people who firmly believed religion...does that terrify you, too?
I don't think we're scared so much as confused. Why would someone intelligent believe in an invisible and all-powerful being for whom no evidence exists, and whose existence is so incredibly unlikely? How could someone intelligent, who would would presumably be well-read and therefore be aware of the incredible range of (blatantly silly) things people have professed belief in throughout history, not simply place modern religion in the same category? How can intelligent people, who dismiss out of hand many other superstitions, believe in the most outlandish things? Is it really that hard to get past childhood indoctrination?
Religion is so clearly a means for uneducated people to explain the world around them, as well as a way of wishing the world was not as it is (ie. denying mortality), that it is very hard to see how someone smart could fall for it.
That's what confuses us.
Wrong. Just because someone presents an alternate conjecture about the accuracy of a scientific principle does not mean that said conjecture is automatically on the same level of legitimacy as whichever principle one seeks to disprove. If that were the case, I could argue that computers run on magic, and then protest when my theory of devine computation was not taught in computer science classes. The antecedents of ID are undoubtedly religious in nature; ergo, the conclusions postulated by ID proponents are derived from sources known to be false, or at the very least untestable. I said "effectively trampled on", because ID was rejected for being unscientific in this particular case.
ID, not being a scientific hypothesis, will *always* be rejected by legitimate scientists, due to the fact that it:
That is the fault of the defense, and I can't actually fault the judge on that count, from what I've heard at least. However, if ID ever gets a decent legal and scientific team on its side, we should make some headway.
While what you say is probably true, I find the truth of the statement to be a sad reflection on public education, and the gullibility of American Christians. Allow me to be blunt-- ID is not science, and no amount of legal or psuedo-scientific doublespeak will make it so. Science is a process wherein the natural laws governing the universe are explored, tested, pulled, stretched, and examined. A key aspect of scientific study is impartiality; which is to say that a true scientist will not endorse any particular outcome to an experiment until that experiment has been performed and tested by many independant researchers. ID differs from science in that the key promoters of its hypothesis begin with their own surity of their ideas, and then disregard conflicting facts.
Literal Creationism has at least four main tenets: - the earth is young, probably around 6000 years old - God created all "kinds" of animals within 6 evening-morning days (fish vs. birds vs. land mammals vs. humans, etc.) - the earth was devastated by a global flood early in its history - all humans descended from a single couple known in the English Bible as Adam and Eve
Allow me to rebut:
The Earth is not young. Carbon dating, fossil records, geology, atomic theory, astronomy, and many other scientific disciplines have all independantly dated the earth at more than four billion years old.
If God did create the world, and all the things in it, in six days, then how were days reckoned before the creation of the sun?
If God created all the animals, why were so many of them such complete failures as to become extinct?
If all humans are descended from Adam and Eve, then why the biblical prohibition on incest? And, furthermore, I am not a genetic researcher, but I'm fairly certain that thousands of generations of familial in-breeding would result in a rather, shall we say, shallow gene pool.
If it could be shown that any one of these propositions does not hold, then Biblical creationism would crumble. The fact that they are extraordinarily difficult to challenge certainly does not mean that creationism is not a scientific theory. Furthermore, all of the evidence we have ever uncovered and understand quite we
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,
Wrong. Just because someone presents an alternate conjecture about the accuracy of a scientific principle does not mean that said conjecture is automatically on the same level of legitimacy as whichever principle one seeks to disprove. If that were the case, I could argue that computers run on magic, and then protest when my theory of devine computation was not taught in computer science classes. The antecedents of ID are undoubtedly religious in nature; ergo, the conclusions postulated by ID proponents are derived from sources known to be false, or at the very least untestable.
...ID differs from science in that the key promoters of its hypothesis begin with their own surity of their ideas, and then disregard conflicting facts.
- How did the falsity of propositions based on religious sources become an axiom? That is a premise of humanism, but humanism is not known to be a correct doctrine.
ID, not being a scientific hypothesis, will *always* be rejected by legitimate scientists, due to the fact that it:
* Cannot be tested
- you obviously didn't understand my original post
* Cannot be separated from religious dogma
- we believe that the Bible is a direct account of absolute prehistory from the only One who existed at the time. So you're right, our beliefs are rooted in that account. Can you think of a more reliable source for such beliefs? The historical accuracy of the Bible is remarkable, as has been shown by many archaeological discoveries, and is more reliable than any other document that ever existed.
* Requires belief in the supernatural as part of its core support structure
- Would you outlaw the supernatural from science if it does in fact exist? How do you then expect science to accurately describe the universe?
* Negates many scientific principles which *are* tested and well-regarded among people of learning.
- There are a great number of scientific principles which were considered to be adequately tested and were well-regarded in the past that nonetheless have later been widely ridiculed. Unfortunately, one of those, macroevolution, has made a stunning comeback in modern times.
- It sounds like you're condemning evolutionism, not creationism. We are using much different interpretive frameworks.
The Earth is not young. Carbon dating, fossil records, geology, atomic theory, astronomy, and many other scientific disciplines have all independantly dated the earth at more than four billion years old.
- there are many holes in such methods that rely on a uniform past as a basic premise
If God did create the world, and all the things in it, in six days, then how were days reckoned before the creation of the sun?
- time existed before the sun
If God created all the animals, why were so many of them such complete failures as to become extinct?
- there was a catastrophic, global flood
If all humans are descended from Adam and Eve, then why the biblical prohibition on incest?
- the prohibition of incest arose fairly late in history, after the gene pool had become corrupted through genetic
mutations
And, furthermore, I am not a genetic researcher, but I'm fairly certain that thousands of generations of familial in-breeding would result in a rather, shall we say, shallow gene pool.
- our original (and current, to a lesser extent) genes contained an incredible amount of diversity
The *key difference* in these bits of biblical lore which seperate them from real science is that the observer, the reader of the bible, assumes them to be true solely on basis of religious conviction.
- Certainly not. I want to believe the truth, wherever it m
Actually thank the bible for that one.
The bible states numerous times that the earth is "firm" and "immovable". Therefore it cannot be a sphere orbiting the sun now can it?
Also the bible references "earths four corners" something that's only possible if the earth was flat, and Daniel 4:10-11 references a tall tree that is visible to the farthest reaches of the earth. Also only possible if the earth was flat.
So if you take the bible literally, then you must believe in a flat earth.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
And to the second question above, science needs only to describe the natural aspects of the universe. That's what it's for. If you're looking for explanations that include the supernatural, then you need to look to something else because science is the wrong tool for that job. And to force the supernatural into science, is to render it a tool unfit for any job.