Slashdot Mirror
Britons Unconvinced on Evolution
pryonic writes "The BBC is reporting that more than half of Britons do not believe in evolution, with a further 40% advocating that creationism or intelligent design should be taught in school science classes. I'm a Brit myself, and I thought most people over here thought these views were outdated and lacked substance. None of my close friends give any credit to creationism or ID, but we're all well educated athiests so I guess that's to be expected. Maybe I've been blind to the views of the majority in this proudly secular country?"
You mean that country in Europe where the head of state is also the head of the state's established church? And where you can't be head of state unless you're a member of the established church.
As an Englishman in my late 30s I call utter bullshit on this article. These are the fanciful lies of someone with an agenda. I don't know where they pretend to have got their research from, but it's patently untrue. I never met a single person over here who even heard of "intelligent design" (a USA manufactured nonsense) and seriously nobody believes in creationism, even really old people. A more interesting question for me is, why would someone make up such an obvious pack of lies and for what reason?
I really have difficulty in beleiving this. Even here in god-fearing catholic Ireland, everyone I know thinks that creationism is bunk. The only thing I can think of is that they stood in the middle of the street and shouted, "Anyone like to give their views on Creationism and Intelligent Design?" That way they would only have got the religious nuts who espouse this pre-enlightenment throwback. Even the Vatican says that Intelligent Design is not science.
A species (chimpanzees, our "closest" relatives, for example) with 21 pairs of chromosomes can EVOLVE into one with 22 pairs. Do the fossil records indicate critters with 21.1, 21.2, 21.3, 21.4.... pairs of choromosomes?
No. Fossil records do not show DNA. However the clues in our genomes today show that what happened was that in a human ancestor one chromosome split into two.
If not, then explain how a (presumably) mutant new example of an "evolved" chimpanzee with 22 pairs of chromosomes can find another exactly evolved 22-paired mutant -- at the same time -- in the same place -- recognize him or her -- and develop a brand new and unique mating ritual that works. All of these steps are recognized as being necessary to begin to form a new species.
These are not the steps recognized as being necessary to form a new species. It is not clear that the offspring of a 22-pair mutant and a 21-pair non-mutant would be infertile, so it might not be necessary for two 22-pair mutants to mate. And there is certainly no reason for a new mating ritual to magically appear or for mutants to recognise each other.
That said, to deny Darwinism is to ignore the stages and features our own embryos develop and discard: gills, tail, front legs.
This is also incorrect, and has been widely discredited. I wonder if I have just been trolled.
I'm not sure where you are getting your information. Chimpanzees have 24 pairs of chromosomes and humans have 23 pairs. And what happened is that two of the chromosomes fused into one chromosome. Our chromosome two is essentially two of the chimp chromosomes (2p and 2q) stuck together. http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html has a pretty good picture of the chromosome two and its ape versions.
such fusions happen relatively often, and usually result in individuals that can live perfectly normal lives, although they're somewhat less fertile than their conspecifics. the very rare thing is for such a mutation to become fixed in a genome and spread widely; in vertebrate animals, that sort of thing is genetically tricky. (though obviously not impossible, considering humans exist.)
see also: http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html
It does when you and your friends get elected to my daughter's school district board and have it taught to her in science class as if it was equivalent to "believing" that the world is a sphere.
Believe what you want... but don't put in my kid's science curriculum.
I'm teaching my kid to be rational and reasoned. I don't need her being confused by "junk science" being taught to her as if it were real science.
Yes.. your beliefs detract from my well-being (and my families) when you legislate them into law and into school curriculums.
That's where the Christian fundies crossed the line.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
"They loose objectivity and scream "I AM A STUPID IDIOT" to the masses of people as they intimidate and stick their collective tounge out at the very people who are interested in really understanding it."
Sorry, but I can assist people IRL with their personal failings, however I can't make up for years of poor science teachers and countless hours of study in a couple of paragraphs. It's not as if the people will actually READ the links we could post to http://talkorigins.org/ that counter every single creationist talking-point.
It turns out that variations in chromosome number are known to occur in many different animal species, and although they sometimes seem to lead to reduced fertility, this is often not the case. For example, Przewalski's Wild Horse has 66 chromosomes, but domesticated horse has 64 chromosomes, yet they can breed to produce fertile offspring.
The is good evidence based on structural analysis of human chromosome 2 that it is the fused version of two chromosomes found in modern apes.
The genetics of "Post-zygotic Isolating Mechanisms" of speciation is under much study now. Here is a great review of speciation mechanisms.
Generally the strong force on post-zygotic speciation is "epistasis", negatively interacting genetic loci. So different and negatively interacting genes are more important in speciation than slight differences in chromosomal configuration. There are some speciation events driven mainly by chromosomal configuration, though most are not.
Evolution and intelligent design are simply philosophies, not science. Neither should be taught in science, nor is the teaching of interspecial evolution absolutely essential to learning anything in biology.
Evolution is an inevitable consequence when you have the following ingredients:
- A genome that replicates with less-than-100% fidelity.
- A phenotype that is dependent from the genotype
- A fitness that is dependent from the phenotype
Create such a system, and you'll see it evolve. It's facts: it has been simulated thousands of times in computers, for example. Life is such a system: therefore it will evolve.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
Your post illustrates that you do not understand what a "theory" is in the context of science.
From Wikipedia:
Hope this helps.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
One idea posited by Intelligent Design is that the strong and weak nuclear forces...
The fact that the Weak Anthropic Principle is true (and it can't help being true...it's a tautology) does not mean that the Strong Anthropic Principle is true. You'll need to do better than that.
Another idea posed by Intelligent design is that there is a certain minimum amount of information needed to have life--things like ribosomes and transcriptase...
This argument is equal parts misdirection and bunk. Self-replicating molecules can work with only a strand of six DNA nucleotides. Such a self-replicating molecule could have easily formed via pre-biotic chemistry. As life developed, such self-replicating molecules would have been outcompeted and extinguished by other, more complex groups of molecules.
Did it happen in this way? Frankly, I don't know. But saying "I don't know how it could have happened....so God did it" is a classic argument from incredulity. Besides which, evolution has never purported to explain abiogenesis anyway so the entire argument is beside the point.
Intelligent Design posits that life began within one hundred million years after life became possible (shortly after cooling to the point of liquid water.) This is a short time in geological terms. However, life has not begun once since. Therefore something either actively created life once it became possible or something actively keeps new forms of life from springing up.
It should be fairly obvious that, given the fact that life has occupied every conceiveable niche on this planet, that any 'new life' will be effectively prevented from developing. In short, that 'something' that actively keeps new forms of life from springing up is the already established life.
Intelligent Design posits that life changed very slowly immediately after life began, then a profusion of new life forms came into existence during the cambrian period, and life has changed very slowly since.
Ah yes...the Cambrian Explosion argument...again, bunk. The only reason the Cambrian Explosion looks like an explosion at all is because this particular time period is when animals started to evolve hard structures such as teeth and shells....structures that fossilize easily and are easily identifible. There are plenty of Precambrian fossils, however, that developed in the same way and that argue against a sudden Cambrian explosion. Simply put, the "Cambrian Explosion" wasn't an explosion at all.
By the way, the general tone of your post is sarcastic and demeaning, and makes an excellent example the close mindedness of some proponents of Evolution.
I'm sorry you percieve my demand for a rational argument to support your "theory" as demeaning. I'm also sorry you percieve those who do not abandon rationality in favor of 'God did it' at the slightest pretext as 'close minded'.
I would like to say something about your use of scare quotes around the word "theory." I think you'll find, if you look, that a theory is defined as a set of statements having two subsets--the set of statements that are acceptable (s.k.a True,) and those that aren't (s.k.a False.) Thus Intelligent Design easily meets the definition of theory, and your use of scare quotes is unwarranted.
Your definition of the word theory is disingenuous in the extreme...and sadly, par for the course for ID proponents.
Here is the actual definition of theory, from Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Look how many people will defend evolution, even though strictly speaking, they need to post-fix each sentence with ", maybe.".
In science, all knowledge is provisional, so it is belaboring the obvious to say, "The earth orbits around the sun maybe", or "F = MA maybe." This was one of the most telling points that the judge made in the Dover trial. Because all science is provisional, attaching a disclaimer to evolution, and not to other statements of scientific knowledge, gives the false impression that evolution is somehow more subject to doubt than other scientific knowledge.
Look how science is taught, with the assumption that everything written in the textbooks are true.
Every science course I ever took began with an explanation of the scientific method.
Look how people will base their scientific careers and life-work on things that may or may not be correct.
Every scientist does that. So what? It is the only workable way of doing science that anybody has ever found. The people who go into science are the ones who find that fundamental uncertainty exciting and inspiring. It is not what is known that attracts people to science; it is what is not known. Those who are uncomfortable with living among the shifting sands of scientific knowledge should go into fields such as mathematics, where true proof exists, or into religion, where faith does not require evidence.
I have the Old Testement/New Testement/Koran/"insert any religous text", which is a set of recorded assumptions. I base theories from these assumptions. From observation of human interactions and from human history I think that the validity of these assumptions remain true. Am I a scientist performing science?
No because you are leaving out the part about continually seeking ways to test and challenge these assumptions. For a scientist, nothing is more exciting that finding a way to challenge and test something that he or she has always previously been forced to take as an assumption.
Every fucking time there's a discussion about religion, somebody trots out the "God does not play dice" quote...
I don't mind if you want to argue that religious conviction has no clear connection with intelligence or lack thereof, but leave Einstein and his quote about gambling gods out of it. Einstein did not believe in the Christian God.