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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 I'm a Brit myself, and I thought most people over here thought these views were outdated and lacked substance.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?"
On one hand, I'm happy to see that rampant idiocy isn't a uniquely American trait.
On the other hand, however, I'm seriously troubled by this. I guess I was kinda counting on the rest of the world to bitchslap America back to sanity sooner or later, but now it appears that we can't count on the global community saving the day for rationality.
Of particular concern is the statistics quoted:
In other words, 39% chose creationism, as there is no discernable difference between creationism and ID. Score another victory for ID, for once again successfully obfuscating the issue.
Even worse were the statistics regarding what to teach in schools:
Again, nice and confusing, especially when you consider that these statistics don't add up to 100%. I understand that some people would like to see more than one 'theory' taught (the old 'teach the controversy' BS), but displaying the results in this manner is misleading in the extreme. Equally confusing is the fact that the percentage of people who 'did not know' in the previous set of statistics isn't enumerated. One would assume it to be 13%, but in the light of the second set of statistics, who knows?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I think The Economist said it best:
"Intelligent Design is something Britons read about with a smirk before they turn to the Horoscope section"
(from memory, but very close)
Proof that Americans don't have a monopoly on ignorance!
steampunk web design
*Humanity* is a pack of low grade morons, folks. No one country or society has any lock on the Stupid Prize.
This seems to happen everywhere. Mostly people think that a certain idea, that perhaps has little scientific basis, should be taught in school, when they support the idea.
I believe in a creator. Sure. But should creation be taught in a science class? No. Why?
Because I know that somehow my religious beliefs that I want to teach to my children will not be taught according to how I believe. Worse off would be if they were completely opposed, like someone teaching creation by that damn spaghetti monster.
Keep science to science. Start teaching classes that encourage people to look at other viewpoints and learn to see the downsides of their own arguments. Only then will a generation gain the wisdom to not think this is such a great idea.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
I don't understand why everyone feels it's necessary to misspell "atheist" by reversing the I and E.
Well-educated? Sure.
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.
Believing in evolution is something of a vague concept. If I believe in the concept of natural selection (which is readily observable), do I have to believe that life came from a chance encounter of amino acids in some primordial soup a gazillion years ago? How much am I agreeing to?
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
You and your friends are well-educated Atheists, but I'm sure that most people aren't as educated, and even more aren't Atheists. You're less typical than you think.
Wow. Fantastic deduction.
I do not understand how anyone can deny the truth of this. We see it in action time and time again. There are species that were introduced to Hawaii in modern times that have since evolved into new species. I saw one of the best arguments for evolution here on /. as a sig. It said "If you do not believe in evolution, why are you worried about the bird flu?"
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Nothing like denying education to the poor and middle to exacerbate the existing social divisions.
Heck, with all that money we save we could bring back debtor's prisons as well. Everybody wins!
I'd like to see the questions they asked for the survey. It's all too easy to get the results you want with carefully worded questions. I can't think of anyone I know who believes in such nonsense, so I'm taking this with significantly large grain of salt.
Try Cuba, the weather is nice, great cigars, and beautiful women. It really is a nice place...well...except for that one guy.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
C'mon... no matter what the arguement, when are people going to realize that there are a few million other people out there that may have a differing opinion than their own little group of friends?
I myself am a Pagan, and I believe in Intelligent Design and evolution. My beliefs are different that 95% (est.) of the rest of the U.S., but I at least give a little credence to the opinions of others...
... elipses...
It represents a fundemental and very scary thing.
Dump people in numbers can believe stupid things and will follow dump leaders.
It tells us that we have not moved forward in progression from the Roman Crusades. We have not moved forward from burning or drowning accused witches. We have not moved forward from what happened to the Germans who allowed the Nazi Party to rule and successfully exterminate 6,000,000 people under their noses and in their own backyard. It tells us any of these awfull scary things could happen, TODAY.
Is there anything else more scary than a large mis-guided and dump population? If you want to be _real_ scared read Carl Sagan's book - Demon Haunted World. Some of the most scary stuff I ever read.
-- Mean People Suck
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.
If evolution is scientifically sound, can't you present sufficient evidence in the classroom to prove it?
Yes. Any molecular biology textbook is full of factual proofs of evolution.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
"I'm against all public education systems. I don't believe they've worked."
I went to a public school (in South Central Wisconsin), and I think my high school education was excellent. I joined the military and worked in the private sector before returning to college. I wound up bumping into a handful of students I graduated high school with. None of us were upper crust material (I think I was in the 49th percentile). But Hobbs and I aced the math and physics classes, after 6 years of being out of high school.
Now, schools in the SC region of Wisconsin are some mighty fine schools. But if you head out to say, down town Milwaukee, the schools get larger and the education seems to decline. But I think this has less to do with the schools being public and more to do with class size and funding.
Public Schools aren't a failed system, over all it's a very successful system, look at the high school graduation numbers now compared to 50 years ago, look at the average literacy rates. Now, like any system, there are weak points and short comings, but we're not going to cut off your arm for a broken finger. Standards enforcing, proper funding and class sizes, and teacher reviews can all help improve the lesser schools and help educate our youth.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I have no problem with people believing in ID but I do have a problem with representing this as science in school. What is wrong with teaching pure Darwninian evolution? The people who are religious will have no problem combining pure evolution with the existence of god. Why do people insist on trying to teach religion and science mixed? Both can live together IMHO and religious people should understand that the teaching of pure science in no way threatens their religious beliefs. The fact that some *are* threatened is a whole different topic... those people want to force religion on other people.
The difference is in common ancestry and the ages of the earth & universe.
"Creationism" generally refers to Young Earth Creationism. And, sometimes, Old Earth Creationism, which has an old Earth but says that God made life directly.
ID is about saying that there are features of the life we see that point to design, generally by saying that the features are too complex. This can include Theistic Evolutionists, if they believe that God stepped in to tweak the evolutionary process in key places. ID says nothing about common ancestry or the ages of the earth & universe.
I agree completely. Public schools have turned from teaching the basics (and it shows given literacy rates, etc). It all started with schools providing affordable 'nutritious' lunches. Now many school systems have expanded the lunch program, claiming that students are entitled to breakfast as well. There's also the daily milk snack programs. Then we have the whole scoliosis thing. Seriously...why do schools test for scoliosis? Sure, it's a horrible, cripling disease but why is it the function of the schools to test for it? Why not test for other diseases such as diabetes?
Now many schools systems are pushing for similar obeisity screening programs. What the hell does that have to do with a proper education?
Short and simple -- an overbearing government that feels it knows how to raise kids better than parents is using government schools to achieve it's agends with kids.
Excellent post... I was just discussing this the other night and concluded, if nothing else, schools should teach only reading, writing, and math. I would be inclined to include science and history, but that opens up some problems, in my opinion; these are the classes that can teach values that parents may not agree with. Especially selective use of history. I recently saw a middle school history book that literally had the entire middle section dealing with the U.S. Civil War removed. It was in the contents, but not in the book - and the pages weren't just ripped out, it came from the publisher that way. Very disturbing.
But I'd never given any thought to a "faster" public education... if you cut out all the crud, I could see how 11 year olds could be as advanced (if you can call it that) at math as 18 year olds. I'm not sure I agree completely with it, but it's very interesting.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I was once told a story by a friend who is Jewish, I am an atheist, he said that "The Rabis think it's quite amusing that Christians take the Genesis story to be the literal truth." You see, the old testament is derived from the Torah. Rabis have been studying it for a long time (i.e. millenia).
Additionally, it should provide a clue when the Vatican itself proclaims that "The theory of evolution is perfectly compatible with the Bible, it is fundamentalists who are trying to read literally a portion of the bible which was never meant to be interpreted scientifically."
People seem, for whatever reason, bound and determined to believe in this myth. Why? Who knows. If they want to be ignorant, let them be. There's too much scientific evidence in favor of evolution to deny that it's true.
Later, GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Somehow I doubt the distinctions in ID were of importance.
The real success of the ID campaign is its rousin gup of the audience, inciting people into a fury of various emotions, and making the subject altogether taboo.
I tire of all these emotional responses, for that's what ID wants. When we seriously react to it as if it were serious, we give it power. A better reponse is to shirk it off, giggle a bit, and equate it to an urban legend... why not add it to Snopes?
The Custom Mary
You make interesting points, but I'm not in agreement.
Many who are barely making it by right now will instead say "Hey, educating the kids is no longer mandatory and I finally have the money to really get by. The kids can get a job like delivering papers, I can keep working my job, and we'll finally be secure."
I'm fine with that. My parents came from poor countries and thr=ey self-educated after coming to the US. They learned trades while working.
If families decide to not convert the savings into private education, so
No way for his son to get a better life in any field his father doesn't understand.
No, not true. Some people are born with the desire to learn. They'll have to possibly work while learning, but it has happened for thousands of years -- the desire to do better. It might take a generation, but it would be earned and respected by the learner.
Public education has brought the UK and US decreasing literacy and competency. I can't se4 how we're better off.
Do you really believe what you just wrote?
1) Schools are funded primarily through state and local taxes, so even if the Federal government stopped all spending in the area, Federal taxes, (which are the bunk of what people pay,) would stay roughly where they are.
2) K-12 still only accounts for about half of the budget in most states (41 % in CA, for example). So the most you'd be seeing with your "back-to-basics" cutbacks is maybe a 25% reduction in State Taxes.
3) So let's see now 25% reduction in state taxes probably saves you, at most, a few grand a year, probably less, Losing one income earner will cost you more like 25 grand, at least.
4) Another Conservative Pipedream bites the dust.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
That being said, if we must have them, let's focus on pure education -- facts, repetition, useful classes: how to read, write and perform basic math. At most, some basic scientific theory might be OK.
Everything else -- health, PE, higher sciences, diet -- leave it to the family or to competitive higher education.
Isn't that completely backwards? Most people are able to learn their children basic skills, read, write, basic math, basic science. The point at this age isn't half as much teaching as it is social skills - to interact with others and form groups and meaningful social bonds. Most people who lack social antennas or think they're God's gift to mankind got screwed up in this period of their life. Kids need to spend time with other kids, which is what they do at school.
Very very few people are capable of giving children a higher education of any type, except perhaps their own profession. I don't mean to say anthing mean about them, most are hard-working honest people but they just aren't able to teach those sorts of things. Saying "family" and "competitive higher education" are alternatives which provide the same should tell you how wildly off base you are.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
This hypothetical speciation story assumes something that may not be true...that the change in behavior happened after the mutation. Perhaps the initial mutation was a change in behavior, creating a new species. As that species stopped interbreeding with the main line a 22 chromosome mutation spread through the population. Of course, either way it is speculation about a hypothetical situation. But we have to assume that in most situation if a mutation appears that makes it very difficult or impossible for an animal to breed it is unlikely to succeed.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
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
> 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?
First: Chimpanzees did never "evolve" into humans, we both share a common ancestor.
Second: We do have humans with half an extra chromosone (xyy males).
Third and most important: Evolution leaves out *a lot*. Really, it is not like evolutionary biology is a closed and finished science that explains everything. We learn new stuff all the time and adapt the models, as in all other active scientific disciplines.
Actually evolution is more of a frame or paradigm, than a theory itself.
- 22% chose creationism
- 17% opted for intelligent design
In other words, 39% chose creationism...
I'm not sure I agree. Creationism seems to be the "traditional" God creation myth from the Bible. I think "intelligent design" advocates could arguably be a bit more enlightened. Consider the following argument.
Alan Turing showed that any computing machine was equivalent in computing capability to a Turing machine, albeit with performance differences. Advocates of "strong AI" claim that human brains are also equivalent to Turing machines. Extending this, "strong AI" advocates would generally also claim that the entire universe is a Turing-equivalent computing machine. And going a step beyond this, one could imagine that this universe is a computing machine within a larger framework of computing machines. Or, put another way, there could be some intelligent programmer "outside" of our universe who created the computing machine that is our universe. Personally, I'm not compelled by such an argument, but it does involve "intelligent design" without being entirely outside the bounds of logical reasoning.
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
please explain to me how ... a species with 21 pairs of chromosomes can EVOLVE into one with 22 pairs.
If you look at people with Down's Syndrome, you will see that this is not as impossible as you think.
http://www.downsyn.com/whatisds.html/ gives a good explanation.
Basically, when forming sperm or egg cells, the chromosomes divide up 24/22 instead of 23/23, and you have offspring with one chromosome extra. This extra chromosome could be passed on to their own children, so if somewhere down the line two subjects with one extra chromosome would mate, there would be a chance that their offspring would have a complete pair extra.
I don't know if it happened this way, but it certainly would be possible.
Down's Syndrome (and other extra-chromosome conditions) are rare, but not that rare.
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
There is no theory of evolution, just a list of animals Chuck Norris has allowed to live....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Whereas you talk a load of crap and you have thoughts that have no relation to reality, yet you project them onto other people.
Atheists do not have "father" issues.
Atheists do not "believe in god deep down inside" yet deny that belief in front of other people.
Atheists are not "suicides waiting to happen". Just because you are not intellectually strong enough to envision a world without your god to "make things right (and get this, AFTER you DIE)" - does not mean everyone is as weak as you.
Atheists believe that everyone is entitled to believe whatever the hell they want, or not believe it. We wish to hell religious types would just leave us alone and drop the issue, instead of constantly trying to engage us in useless arguments. You can no more prove the existence of your god than I can disprove it. So what's the point?
-- An atheist.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I think you forgot the first adjective: "smug".
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
I can understand why you'd think that you'd need to have the same number of chromosomes, but where the hell did you get that bit about making up an all-new mating ritual?
Ah well... it's not as if you're even right about the chromosome number, anyway...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Simple. Chimpanzees didn't evolve from humans and humans didn't evolve from chimpanzees. They did share a common ancestor in the past. In humans two chromosomes have fused. BTY humans have 23 and chimpanzees have 24 not the 21 and 22 you listed.
The only fact I am afraid you got right is that our current knowledge of evolution is far from complete. There is still a lot that we don't know like how did life start. Lots of theories but none that have been proven. How the first eye evolved. The jump from single to multicellular. There are lots of unanswered questions but none require ID.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Having seen the movie, "Underworld: Evolution", I'm starting to believe that the concept of evolution needs to be banished, if for no other reason than to prevent entertainment companies from coming up with these ideas.
Underworld: Evolution (movie)
Evolution (movie)
King of Fighters Evolution (video game)
Turok: Evolution (video game)
Gah!
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.
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?
1. Some people have XXY chromosomes; those with genetic disorders like Down's syndrome may have a different number. It is not such a great step to imagine two chromosomes being fused, split up, or being produced twice (first identical, then later one modified).
2. I am not religious, but to the extent that I can imagine a God, the one you are describing is not very impressive. So the Creator instituted the evolutionary process, but some steps were to complex for this process to handle, so he went back and tinkered. "Oh, early humans have been evolving quite well now for a couple of million years, but I need one more chromosome, and that just isn't going to happen under the original laws I defined before. Time to intervene and add a chromosome here, a gene there." How did the Almighty Creator of the Universe become a micro-mangaing bio engineer? Or are you a polytheist, and adding a particular chromosome was the task of some junior spirit/ godling?
Tor
If not, then explain how a (presumably) mutant new example of an...
Just because you don't understand the science doesn't mean that it's not true. Explaining how it works would fill several pages. Your best bet is to enroll in a genetics course, study hard for a few years, and then you will understand how it's not only possible but probable.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Ok, so you're happy with public education in Wisconsin. Don't you see it being a better system if it is funded locally instead of sharing funds between counties or states? Why would someone proud of being from your area want to waste money on people you can not hold accountable and you can't audit or review?
I believe that "public" education might have a chance if the funds are kept locally -- preferably voluntarily funded.
I am not against a group education system, I just see the waste in kowtowing to the teacher unions and the public worker unions.
I don't see a rise in literacy rates, and as an employer of youths, I see a terrible bifurcation in the intellect of the average teenagers -- a very small minority are REALLY bright, but the large majority are what I would consider "dumb."
To paraphrase Inspector Renault from Casablanca: "I'm shocked, shocked to find that ignorance is going on in here!". It doesn't matter that it's evolution they don't accept. It could be relativity or gravity or inertia. It's a symptom of the state of British science education. The problem with any belief system is that the believers are afraid that if some scientific theory is true their religion must be false. When in reality they just need to change their perception of their religious beliefs.
" Love thy neighbor" is a good maxim, but it's not dependent on a 6,000 year old Earth. They forgot God is a metaphor and do not understand the difference between denotation and connotation. Anyway, I think Douglas Adams put it best when he wrote: "Humans are not proud of their ape ancestry and never invite their cousins around for dinner."
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
The Bible is not even close to being a pristine source of Gods words, but as of, say, 1990, the genetic code of everything on earth was--until we humans tampered with some microorganisms.
All this debate we are having is because we have left these questions to be pondered by lawyers (and theologians), but they should be done by geeks (and their religious counterpart, mystics). The method is simple: look to the source. Our software/and hardware source-code is our DNA, and it is responsible for creating everything from our nano-scale protein structure to the shape of our butts (the ultimate unfathomable macro-scale manifestation of a micro-feature viz.
Looking at the source code could tell us what life is, what coding tricks the original designer used, and if he left any comments or "easter eggs" or something which give us a clue as to his original intent behind any features.
The Sufis quote Muhammad in saying "he who knows himself knows his Lord." Well, literally then whoever comprehends the genetic code knows the genetic designer, if any. If there never was a designer, then that will become apparent when we look at the code.
Hasan
It's interesting to see how many post are talking about religion being one of the reasons people don't believe in evolution. Someone else did the work for me, but the research from UK based Christian-Research.org says that very few Britons actually go to church. The research goes on to say a few things about the religious nature of the UK. I'm not saying that I agree with them, but maybe that many people just aren't convinced that evolution is the most accurate theory to explain how we got here. This study just may show the skeptical nature of people across the Atlantic.
Dilbert creator Scott Adamshas a good take on this.
Two comments brought to mind by this article...
One is an article (can't remember who by, sorry) that I read shortly after the 2004 election, taking Democrats to task for the re-election of George Bush. Essentially, the author was relating her conversation with a Democrat friend, who exclaimed something to the effect of, "I don't know HOW that man could have gotten re-elected, I don't know ANYBODY who voted for him!" The point of the article was that we all tend to assume that everybody thinks the same way we (and our small circle of friends) do, and it's often disconcerting to find that we're outside the mainstream, or that a very sizable portion of the general population disagrees with us.
I'm also tickled to see that, despite all of the characterizations of Americans as backwoods hillbillies due to the seeming popularity of ID & Creationism here, apparently idiocy knows no national boundaries. I'll be waiting to see the coverage of this in the newspapers & magazines like Time & Newsweek... I probably shouldn't hold my breath for it, because this thinking doesn't dovetail with the image of americans that the world has grown comfortable with, namely that we're overwhelmingly mouth-breathing troglodytes, while the rest of the world consists of polished, cosmopolitan, urbane, well-manicured people.
"If taught correctly, creationism does not necessarily imply one religion. It implies intelligent design meaning God, gods or advanced aliens. And why shouldn't it be taught? If evolution is scientifically sound, can't you present sufficient evidence in the classroom to prove it? Or are you worried that *gasp* some people might prefer to continue to adhere to their faith?"
Exactamundo. Except science and faith are two completely different things. Science is descriptive and predictive based on a sort of majority rules perception, faith is belief in something that exists beyond our perception. Once something exists in our perception, that aspect passes into the realm of the scientific. What makes evolution science is that tangible things that exist in perceptive reality have been discovered that support the theory. ID is presented as a faith issue, because (and feel free to correct me if you think I've overlooked something) the arguments for it are either purely abstract exercises with dubious logic or attacks against evolution. I mean dubious in a purely logical sense, and I freely admit that logic does not necessarily apply to faith. But it's the cornerstone of science.
"Growing up in America, I could never decide who had a greater missionary zeal: the Southern Baptists or the evolutionists, most of whom were not even fit to be called amateur biologists."
Here's where I may agree with you. How many that scoff at non-evolutionary beliefs actually know a real justification for evolution? However, most people can understand the two theories well enough to understand that one is faith and the other science.
"Maybe I've been blind to the views of the majority in this proudly secular country."
It often seems those of the "educated atheist" bent are frequently entirely ignorant of the actual views held by the citizenry of which they are a part. In my opinion it's a matter of isolation. People in general, and young educated atheists are no exception, tend to congregate with others similar to them. It's natural, then, to make the mistake of mapping one's peers' views onto the populace as a whole.
As for Britain being a "proudly secular country", I don't think so. Norway maybe. Germany. France. Not the UK. Not yet, at least.
Religious education in the UK has always been a joke. Perhaps if it was taken a little more seriously and taught as comparative theology rather than a fact memorising session then issues such as this could be be taught in school, rather than R.E. being dismissed as a second class subject.
I.D. and creationism are not science. But they are important and children should be educated about these beliefs.
Loop, twist and loop again.
This thread got huge. I don't see why everyone is so stuck to one side of the argument. I'll preface this reply (even though no one will likely read it) by saying that I am in fact a Christian. Yes, this means I believe in the creation. Now, that out of the way... It seems that all of you who claim to be 'educated' are also athiests. Why is this? Is it because your 'scientific' mind tells you that nothing can exist before the beginning of time? This is something that can be viewed as a flaw with both theories. With the creation, God was around, and with the big bang, there were some dust particles. If that's not entirely accurate, bear with me, as the exact details of evolution theory do not matter here. Point is, something existed before the beginning of time in both thoeries, so they both must be false. That is the scientific method, right? It's quite obvious that no person will EVER be able to explain the beginning of time. They might be able to use science to explain how things progressed, but not why. The science can't provide a reason for what was there to begin with and how it got there. My viewpoint is this: evolution theory is valid. But not quite to the extent that most people caught up in it think. I've seen enough science in my few biology courses to know this is the case. Natural selection is real. I would say, though, that evolution theory is how God did his work. Evolution is an endless process that is still going on today. There's no reason for these two viewpoints to not co-exist. One could even say that the big bang is the method God used to create the universe. Now here's where my evolution knowledge gets a little flaky. Most evolutionists from what I've seen will dispute my argument here pulling out dates and timelines. But if I'm not mistaken, these timelines were created with carbon dating, which has been shown to yield inaccurate results. I'd research to find some instances, but I'm late for class. Yes, I'm a senior in a university studying engineering. I guess that makes me somewhat educated, doesn't it?
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
Being brittish qualifies me to talk about this, I asked a few friends and some collegues at work and all of them believed in evolution ... even the christian who goes to church every weekend thinks that there was a form of evolution.
I'm not sure where/how they got a cross section of the population of this 'survey' but as far as I can see it's not very true.
What I am interested in, is what do people who think that the Earth is less then 10,000 years old, think when they pick up a National Geographic magazine, or turn on The Discovery Channel? Is all this information a big lie to them? How about the Genographic Project? Even the "family-friendly" movie March of The Penguins begins with Morgan Freeman stating that penguins have made this journey for millions of years.
It appears that everywhere around us we are exposed to information about the Earth being millions/billions of years old, and yet half of America does not believe this to be true? I'm not taking a stand on the issue, I'm just really confused about why/how people belive these things.
The real problem is that there is a poor chain of responsibility. Teachers don't get backing from parents or the pricipal. Parents would rather blame teachers than take responsibility for their kids.
I'll never blame the teachers -- I do blame the teachers unions. I offered an idea about separating teaching from grading -- offer teachers the ability to teach a given curriculum, and then let a private organization grade the students. I found out the teachers unions don't allow this. I wish I could grade my own work that I perform, I'd always give it a "C" -- that way I can ask for more funding to try to do better with what I have to work with.
I also blame the government mandates. It is very hard to fire a teacher -- I blogged about this a week ago, and I quoted this recent 20/20 episode:
We tried to bring "20/20" cameras into New York City schools to see for ourselves and show you what's going on in the schools, but officials wouldn't allow it.
In the last four years, only two teachers out of 80,000 were fired for incompetence.
It took years to fire a teacher who sent sexually oriented e-mails to "Cutie 101," a 16-year-old student.
You can download this 20/20 episode via torrent, if you want the link e-mail me.
The teachers are not necessarily to blame, although I do tell my friends that are teachers to leave the union (almost 20% of them have!). Government funding also tends to run up the costs without the actual workers getting the benefit -- more government money attracts more government cronies.
The head of state, the Queen, is also the head of the Church of England. Nothin' secular about that, mate, unless you Brits have redefined "secular" and didn't clue the rest of us in on it.
You would think that while posting about education I would find it wise to run a spell checker before hitting post. Please, excuse my typo's.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Come on, how many parents know how to teach children - and I mean really know?
Today? Few -- because they give up that responsibility of parenthood to the State. I won't have a child until I can educate them in the system I choose with my own funding. I strongly believe that you shouldn't have children until you can accept the responsibility of them. If you do "by accident" there are churches, mosques, synagogues and pagan churches that are willing to help you fund their growth and education. Don't come asking me (a responsible human being) to pay for your error.
What about the child? The child is screwed anyway -- if the parents aren't ready to parent, the public education system will have a monster on their hands. I see public education as the new parent, and this is not what I want.
I'd rather see the bottom 10% of the poor having to get their education through the church or even work mentorship programs than see 90% of the kids be held back because of equality laws and mandates.
More like bad things the US has imported from your country. We asked for the seperation of Church and State for a reason your country being the prime example at the time.
A lot of misunderstanding can be avoided with the proper use of the terms. A hypothesis is "a tentative or working assumption which scientific study has yet to validate." A theory is "a hypothesis or group of hypotheses which have been validated but not to the point of near certainty." Journal of Theoretics
(I was at 49% in highschool, I've been top 5% in college and I felt the first 2 years were nothing but review)
I was in the bottom 5% of my high school, but I was earning over teacher's pay by 16. I learned through work, and I believe others can as well.
Don't you feel terrible that your first 2 years of college -- a competitive system where YOU choose which school and how much you're willing to pay -- has to reteach everyone for 2 of the 4 years? Why is that?
I was ready for college by 13 (I started my first business at 13). I would have loved to take a few classes (say, 6 hours a week) for 8 years while working, receiving mentorship from entrepreneurs, and paying for it myself.
Yet I was practically mandated to go to high school. Freshman year they wanted to place me in an LD class (low attention span to my classes) but I received the highest ACT and SAT scores in my district 2 years later. I was also a D- student because I tried to force the issue of skipping high school and going straight into the work program.
50% of my friends and employees have gone to college. All of them gained 4-5 years of college and social debt and a piece of paper. None of them are smarter or better socially than those friends and employees of mine who never went to college. My best employee is a high school drop out and he is sharp as a whip -- and his parents are complete morons.
At 18 I recommend taking the money and time you'd spend on college and starting a business. I've helped many teenagers do this over the years, and almost 90% of them are still in business and well ahead of their peers.
College is now primarily to teach kids what they didn't learn in 12 years of public education. As the government starts funding almost 70% of college educations, the prices have gone up and the quality has gone down. I don't even look for degrees any more in any of my businesses. Today I am visiting a customer who has a US$100 million gross income in their field and I'll be helping them hire a few new thinkers. Of the top 10 candidates, only 5 have college degrees. The process I use to hire is to put them to work for an hour and see who comes out sweat free and confident. College doesn't seem to teach those skills.
The first thing you learn in Science is the story about water in a tub.
If you fill a tub full of water and then reduce the water coming out of the faucet to a drip, you can easily get a scientist to give you the wrong answer by bringing him in at this point and asking how long it took for the tub to fill up.
It would be ridiculous to argue against the current rates of mutation and natural selection. However, it's also ridiculous to just assume it's happened that same way for all of history.
It's perfectly fine to say "IF it has always happened this way" then this is how things played out. The problem arises when you flatly refuse to listen to, and try to belittle anyone who says that the tub was filled beforehand.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
If you have to start name calling and relying on sarcasm to strengthen a scientif-(pol)-ical viewpoint then you have a weaker intellectual basis than you thought.: You must have a framework work to... Your complete framework is based on making fun of people. It is so focused on trying to say something funny enough to score a 2 on Slashdot. Most of your sarcastic remarks are a 2 rated by other people who believe what you believe anyways. Wow you are so consumed by your pseudo intellectualism you are reduced to ignore the complete contradiction between thermodynamics and evolution (just a side note). You're only a like few billion years wrong. Look I am about to get through my entire comment with out calling you "Stupid". I believe most of you mother would consider me more intelligent than you based on I don't have to attack people I disagree with name calling. Wow you prove your point by making fun of people. Thats higher thinking.
~7,000 year old earth very unlikely
If I could draw here would be my description of a cartoon. Picture any great thinker eating a large bowl of FSM and the caption would read, "MMMM... this is good satire, but I am afraid it will not satisfy my hunger."
Hey, what has secularism to do with what people believe? I am a secularist and a christian. so what? Can't that be? There is nothing wrong with running a state in a secular manner but believing in God on a personal basis. As long as evolution is taught as part of proper education, I don't have aproblem with that. I do have a problem with people telling me there is nothing else possible. That is indoctrination in a atheistic manner and has nothing to do with secularism. A secular society should not only be open to atheistic views of the world but also to theistic ones. Guy, /. is really biased on this topic.
If you fill a tub full of water and then reduce the water coming out of the faucet to a drip, you can easily get a scientist to give you the wrong answer by bringing him in at this point and asking how long it took for the tub to fill up.
Erm, in a word: no.
If all you told him was that the tub was full and the tap is dripping, then yes, you might get a scientist to give a wrong conclusion.
But if you let the scientist examine the tub and the faucet, more likely than not, you'd get the right answer.
That's the problem with ID. It is an attack on science, not a theory unto itself. Science may have it wrong, so god must have done it.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
Well, there are humans born with 21 pairs or 23 pairs (XXY syndrome) of chromosomes, too. Why is it that not every cross between a horse and a donkey is sterile?
If you throw enough of a population together long enough, you're going to get some interesting edge cases that occaisionally express themselves. If you have some sort of selective pressure for those traits, they will express themselves even more so.
If you don't believe this, just go look at your average interurban rock pigeon flock. Most of them will be just like all of the others. But in a very few flocks, some of the more recessive genes will be played out - there willl be a bird or two that is mostly white, mostly brown, or otherwise not quite like all of the others.
Even in strains of historically white sheep (Dorset, Romney, etc) you get the occaisional odd black sheep. It just happens.
To name a few:
Phlogiston
The Plum Pudding Model
The Four Humours (as a physiological model>
The Earth is Flat
The Geocentric model
I could list hundreds of other beliefs that seemed perfectly rational based upon the science of the time.
Of course, I can also predict the arguement that you will make was that these weren't based upon good science, but the fact of the matter is that they were based upon the science of the time the prospered in. We look back on them now with modern scientific methods and see them as being pretty bad explinations for things, but there is little to say that in another 200 years or another couple millenia that our descendents won't say the very same thing about a lot of out scientific beliefs.
Don't take this as me making an attack on evolution, frankly I believe it myself it does seem to make a certain amount of sense. I also happen to believe in God myself, and I don't find that to be on any level a contradiction.
What I do find ridiculous is making blanket attacks on someone who does take the time to understand any scientific theory and decides that because of the known problems with it that they don't believe it to be the right explanation. This isn't some fundamental failing of the person as it is having a basic skepticism that should be lauded as it is the very basis of science itself. We shouldn't absolutely believe anything we cannot prove.
On the contrary, it's people who try and make objective truth subjective and believe that feel-good solutions are more important than being right that're to blame for society's ills.
"Life's deeper questions" tell us what to do with our lives, and should not be used to describe the exact processes of life's creation. To do so *is* idiocy.
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.
None of my close friends like eating pork, but we're all well educated jewish rabbis so I guess that's to be expected.
In all fairness the first time I heard of Intelligent Design was here on slashdot, I usually read my news online and I'm a student so have no TV. If as a 22 year old student I found out about intelligent design on slashdot, then it's probably accurate to say that most people in the UK wouldn't know what it was. It's probably the most intelligent sounding option, purely cus it uses nice big words (as well as the word intelligent) so people on the street were like "yeah I think i'll pick that one". And another person said already that as a country we're quite secular. I did a very small (my sample size was only 120) study on secularisation in England in 2002, the majority (about 97%) said they thought of themselves as Christian, but not even half of them went to church on a regular basis, few of them had ever read the entire Bible, many had never read any of the Bible. The majority were also pro abortion.
It's not clear to me what you're arguing here, but it sounds like just another "God of the Gaps" argument, whcih even many Christians reject explicitly: "science can't yet explain X, so we turn to religion to explain it." Then,as the gaps narrow, your God gets smaller and less important. Eventually, the gaps close altogether.
Human and social behavior are complex and have a complex and fascinating history. It will take a long time to find all the evidence and make sense of it, but there has been substantial progress for more than a century. As we advance further, will the little god who dwells within the Great Mystery of Human Existence then be evicted? I think so.
Helium balloons want to be free.
How is this comment NOT flamebait?
:^)
Are you seriously saying that only an idiot would believe that there might be a creator that made things, rather than believing that they just happened by chance and natural selection? You've closed the debate in your head, and assumed that anyone not agreeing with you is a moron.
"And you, sir, are worse than Hitler."
The number of chromosomes is not engraved in stone. In fact, chromosomes break, rejoin and otherwise rearrange at a surprising rate---this is turmed chromosomal instability (a key signature of many cancers). Additionally, chromosome number can change through incorrect segregation at cell division. In general much of evolution is thought to occur through large changes in the structure of the genome (such as gene dulication). It has been shown that bakers yeast has duplicated its entire genome at some point, which could lead to twice as many chromosomes at least in the beginning. See http://www.wi.mit.edu/news/archives/2004/el_0308.h tml. Of course most of such changes are deletirious (as are single gene mutations, the more familiar instrument of evolution) but some of them may confer an evolutionary advantage.
Regarding your complaint regarding barriers to mating with different numbers of chromosomes:
The equine species are good examples here, because they diverged rather recently and yet display rather different chromosone structure. Domestic horses have 32 pairs of chromosomes, Donkeys have 31. They hybridize to give offspring with... yep, you guessed it, 31.5 pairs of chromosomes. But they're sterile, you say, right? Sure, but what about the offspring of wild horses (33 pairs of chromosomes) and domestics (with 32)? They have fertile offsspring with 32.5 pairs of chromosomes. I encourable inquiring minds to explore these issues further on their own... this is not some gaping "hole" in the theory of evolution.
It's troubling when posts on slashdot are modded "5: insightful" for being nothing but ignorant stabs in the dark... at best this is someone who has been puzzled by questions but too lazy to search for answers, and at worst, a sly underhanded attempt to equate Evolution and I.D. In the internet age, curious people (slashdot users, no less!) can quickly find answers to many of their simple questions with a quick internet search. I would recommend http://www.google.com/ and http://www.pubmed.com/. Search there for your conspiracies of scientists hiding holes in "Darwinism".
At first I hoped that you really CAN tell the difference between a mathematical theorem and a scientific hypothesis.
Then I thought that if you did know the difference, then you were being deliberately deceptive when you compared them, which would be worse.
Ignorance is easier to cure, and less destructive, than dishonesty.
In the end, I guess, I hope that you really do know the difference, but were just not thinking when you suggested that they work the same.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
There is simply "Evolution". Small changes over time. Given enough time, the accumulation of change is great. Humans didn't evolve from monkeys, humans and monkeys evolved independently from the same ancient ancestor. You won't find, and wouldn't expect to find, an "intermediate" species between humans and monkeys... that's like saying there's an intermediate race between caucasoid and mongoloid (i.e. "Why haven't we found a race of people that are in between caucasian and oriental?") Common ancestry does not imply an intermediate species.
I just wish this whole "rapture" thingy would get here already... the rest of us would like to advance as a species without the fundamentalists christians holding us back.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
spontaneous generation is not an aspect of the theory of evolution. If you were taught that it is, then you were taught the wrong thing.
The theory of evolution is quite simple. It makes one simple statement. That is; "The percentage of a particular phenotype(in this day and age we now say genotype) changes over time."
THat is it. That is the theory of evolution. I think this is very hard to disagree with.
Now once you start addining in things like natural selection, the theory gets more expansive, but not nessesiarily less valid. Biochemists running auger plates to select for specific bacterial strains see this nautual selection process everyday.
The point is, spontaneous generation is not part of evolution and you have still not shown how ID/creation ism can be falsifiable. We are left to conclude that you do not think it is. Therefore you do not belive it is science. Therefore you do not belive that it should be taught in the science classroom. Therefore, i do not see what the problem is...
ut its also isolated to NYC - like a lot of problems NYC has.
Watch the 20/20 episode -- this problem is NOT isolated to NYC. My town (suburban, halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee) has 2 teachers that should have been fired years ago -- but the school administration can't. The union has threatened to walk if the teachers are canned. I am very involved with my school board (I constantly go to review why my stolen taxdollars are being wasted on useless programs).
However, you remain completely silent on the fact that many poor simply wouldn't get an education.
Since when is this a fact? The poor eat, right? The poor generally have televisions and cell phones also. Some of the poor in this country are indoctrinated poor people -- they're poor because it means less work.
Jacon Hornberger comments about how the poor would get educated in a free market education system. Voluntary donations by the wealthy. In fact, this has been happening for decades already.
The poor today already get the worst educations -- their schools are run over by gangs, drug dealers and unsafe environments. From what I've seen in my volunteer time with my church in very bad neighborhoods near my town, the poor are sent to school to keep them together. Kids with the desire to get away from their poverty have no chance -- the system won't allow it.
There are also places where it completely fails - particularly when there just isn't much market competition involved.
Yet McDonalds and Burger King can provide a meal for $3 (cheaper over time actually), but education has to increase its costs 10% every year? Wal*Mart can provide clothing at lower and lower prices every year, but we need to keep adding more topics for teachers to teach even though we're already paying way more than we should be?
Before we had public education, our poor had higher literacy rates. Current literacy rates do not actually test reading skill, they are based on how many years a student has studied English. Been in school for 6 years? You're literate, at least for statistical purposes.
To me, it seems that public education stifles 90% of the kids in order to try to help the 10% at the bottom. This is not how it should be. By trying to make everyone an average citizen, how can you expect some to excel and become the next wealthy generation? How can you expect some to have to settle in lower paying jobs to keep the economy driving strong?
It isn't just about some theory about the physical world. After all, how many people would be offended if you said you didn't believe in the Standard Model? There is no moral significance to the truth of falsity of evolution. However, the opponents of evolution, in an attempt to discredit it, attack science itself. Since the evidence supports it, they attack evidence as a means of knowledge. Since it is logically consistent, they twist logic into an irrational system. It isn't just an attack on evolution that they are waging, but an attack on our capability to understand the world: an attack on the human mind itself. All of our philosophical and technological achievements come from reason and science and an honest quest for knowledge. The goals of anti-evolutionists, if fully realized, would reverse the trend of human progress. Obviously this isn't going to happen, but they've already done a pretty good job of slowing it down.
English is easier said than done.
Evolution / natural selection is as simple as this. "What can be, will be." Yes, that's it. This is the principle behind life. Why? If an organism / combination of proteins / grey goo / etc. can multiply, it will. If two different entities need one same resource to multiply, the stronger will get it. Why? If it can get it before the other, it will.
/ID believers try to use science to disprove evolution, like "aminoacids can be left and right handed, but some of those are poisonous". Well, these areguments can be easily rebated. I googled 5 minutes ago and found David C. Wise's page with a pascal program called "MONKEY", that demonstrates how effective random generation can be.
Applying this to the origin of life, a combination of aminoacids which can self-replicate will flourish in comparison of those that don't. In those replications there are flaws, changes or mutations. Those that can multiply, will.
Proteins are nothing but a composition of aminoacids. Aminoacids can be produced "spontaneously" in the right conditions. I'm sure that at some point, enough different aminoacids were present so that a simple chemical reaction
(thunder, UV light) would bond them together.
Why is it difficult to believe in the primordial soup? Let's think about it. According to Ramsey's Theorem in an infinite discrete space, any specific combination of words can be found (this is also known as the infinite monkeys with typewriters writing a work of Shakespeare). So, what happens if we get enough proteins all mixed together, waiting for yet another catalyst?
(I can testify something about the Ramsey's theorem. I know a guy who based a computer research paper on it for pattern recognition. And the thing worked.)
200 million years could be enough time for simple microorganisms to form. The earch is 4.5 billion years old. Think about it.
Have you guys noticed how the book of Genesis starts with... "and the Spirit of God floated above the waters"? I was taught in school that the first lifeforms on earth originated on the surface of the sea.
Maybe the problem with creationists is not that they don't believe in evolution, but that they find it to be physically impossible. Lack of faith perhaps? I wonder, why is it so easy for them to believe that God made Adam and Eve out of a pile of mud, and yet so difficult that God let the aminoacids combine and form simple organisms that would later combine and evolve?
Creationists
Those aren't absolute reversals. So the Plumb Pudding Model was revised. Was it wrong about electrons? Was it wrong about atoms having a source of positive charge? No. It was wrong by not being specific enough about where exactly positive charge falls in an atom. Thus it is an example of idea evolution.
Take Phlogiston. Okay, it sounds a little silly from our modern perspective, but does that make it absolutely unmitigatingly wrong? Of course not. It simply attributed to a gas what should have been attributed to the absence of a gas. Once again, when the evidence came out against it the modification was made. In fact, Phlogiston theory aided the understanding of gasses. The Phlogiston model was remarkably accurate except for the problem of identifying which direction reactions actually occur in.
The same is true of the others. You especially should have realized that the flat-Earth notion is not a full reversal; many applications today assume a flat Earth as a reasonable approximation of terrain.
Evolution will be the same. There will be certain aspects that have to be modified. Perhaps new processes will be discovered that enhance our understanding. But it is not reasonable to suppose that the entire framework will be scrapped.
As for obeisity screening... fat kids are hungry all the time and being hungry interferes with learning. Half-starved children don't learn very well either.
I'm not sure I understand why you disdain school lunches and breakfasts so much. Without proper nutrition, people don't physically grow much less learn anything.
Some families cannot afford to give their children lunch. Remember that public school took kids out of the workforce. Kids who aren't working, aren't making money. As a result, the State (which requires school attendance) has to make up the difference.
I'm guessing that since you have a computer, you can afford to feed yourself and that you're talking about things you haven't had to experience first hand.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
1) the teaching goes on in the schools, and then you get dangerously close to - if not right on top of - seperation of church and state, with the state imposing a values system (i.e. religious beliefs) where it has no right to,
I hate to burst your bubble here, but religion does not have a monopoly on value systems. The two are not equal, which is what you just stated.
We do have a non-religious value system. It's codified in our laws. We can teach those values in school without stepping on parental toes.
As for belief in creationism, that's fine, believe whatever you want. If you believe God set up the laws of physics and set the universe in motion knowing the outcome, that is a form of creationism, and I'll buy that as a possibility (though not scientifically testable).
If you believe God created the Universe whole-cloth 10,000 years ago, I'm gonna say you're a backwards, willfully-ignorant rube. If you insist that viewpoint is taught in classrooms, I'm gonna say you are intentionally trying to destroy everything we've worked for these last three hundred years, and I'll have to ask you to give back your computers, your vitamins, all the medicines you might take for any allergies and whatnot; because if you deny science as a proven epistomology, you deny the advances made by science.
Religion is not a proven epistomology. You might be able to pass it off as a metaphysics, but that's about it. Religious belief cannot explain the hows; it can only explain the whys. And that is where I start getting pissed, when you take something that is halfway decent at explaining why, and trying to pass it off as knowledge of the how.
The quest for the divine is tricksy and difficult. If there's one thing I know about religion, it's that as soon as you know something about it, you are wrong. Near as I can judge, that is almost the fundamental nature of the divine.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Actually, it is, when ToE is referred as an alternative possibility to creationism. The logical possibilities for the beginning of the life are as follows:
Option number one is unlikely, since universe itself has not, according to current theories, always existed. Life that has been in existence for a limited amount of time must have had a beginning. So that only leaves the options of life being created by some supernatural entity, or the first seeds of life coming from unliving material on their own - spontaneously.
Of course it is also logically possible that life was created and then evolved, but that is a fundamentally creationist worldview - that is, will wall to the ID/creationism side of the current debate.
As for why creationism requires a supernatural creator, it is simply that any other kind of creator couldn't have existed before nature (universe) began, and thus we are faced with the same dilemma of beginning with it.
No. That statement would be true even if no evolution was possible; afte all, whenever I step on a bug, the percentage of that bug phenotype relative to all other bug phenotypes changes. Similarly, every time my immune system kills a bacteria trying to invade my body, the percentage of that bacteria relative to all bacteria changes. This is true even if every bug and bacteria is guaranteed to be a carbon copy of its parent(s) (which they aren't, of course). Your single-sentence summary of evolution is true in all imaginable worlds where organisms are born, die, or both, and there is more than one kind of organism, whether or not these organisms are capable of producing any variation in their offspring or not.
Besides, the article clearly stated that the survey was about origin of life, not just what has happened since then.
Of course, none of this makes ID falsifiable.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Actually, it is, when ToE is referred as an alternative possibility to creationism.
But the ToE is not an "alternative possibility to creationism." The ToE is simply a scientific explanation for the emergence of diverse species from common ancestry. It's not the fault of the theory of reality happens to contradict any number of religious myths.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
strong and weak nuclear forces are finely balanced. Any stronger, and the universe would consist of the near-equivalent of a neutron star at the center of the universe and nothing any where else.
This and other reasonings that somehow hint at intelligent designers, fall under the anthropic principle. The physical realm around us will by necessity seem perfectly fine-tuned to support us, because if it wasn't, we wouldn't be here to examine it. And if the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory holds true, then there exists an infinite number of universes, of which an infinite number is incapable of supporting our kind of life.
You just told us that you filled it up and then tried to pretend it was filled by a dripping faucet. Obviously you're talking bollocks.
That's the problem with ID. You make an argument based on bad facts or no facts at all, in fact a lot of it is out and out lies. You don't know that god created the earth (so your straw man is drowning in your tub), but you are prepared to belittle people who spend their entire lives finding out exactly how it did get formed. I know whose opinion I'd rather trust.
Feeling belittled yet ?
Short and simple -- an overbearing government that feels it knows how to raise kids better than parents is using government schools to achieve it's agends with kids.
The bureaucracy of public education is almost entirely local in nature, with the vast majority of the control being at county level or lower. You would be more correct, then, to say that communities have become overbearing in their attempt to raise each others kids. When book banning and arguments like ID come up, it's not some faceless government division a thousand miles away in Washington trying to control your life, it's your nosey neighbors and fellow PTA members doing the deeds.
It's just so much more comfortable to blame it all on "government" than to admit that you and your neighbors ARE the government in question and, ergo, it's not Big Brother's fault, it's yours.
While it is true that much the current "intelligent design" rhetoric is coming from political/religious think tanks in the US, the intellectual antecedents of design are much older, and British. Most of the arguments - and even some of the specific examples - used by today's "intelligent design theorists" were fully explicated over 200 years ago by the Anglican theologian William Paley. In 19th century England, Paley's writings were required reading for students preparing for the clergy. As a student, Charles Darwin read Paley and was greatly influenced by his thinking.
The roots of the "culture wars" are very deep, and go back long before Darwin published "On the Origin of Species." Despite the simplistic history found in most textbooks, the clash between established religion and evolution preceded Darwin's work. Darwin was participating in a long-running debate about how to reconcile biblical history with the new facts and interpretations of science.
-- Anonymous Pedant
You're not thinking long-enough term. In the short term, science proceeds in fits and starts, complete with old-boy networks and the occasional prejudice, greed, self-promotion, in-fighting, blind alleys, etc., and even falsified data and experiments.
BUT, over the *long-term* (decades, perhaps longer) science IS self-correcting. The very article you cite is proof; the truth came out. The scientific method guarantees that, given enough time, the truth *will* become known. You just have to think longer-term.
Cheers, Tim -- Tim Janke Part mad scientist, part lion tamer: sr. software engineer, global team leader, project mana
PS: I know I shouldn't respond to trolls, but could not resist.
PPS: Who are these "Evolutionists"? You mean Scientists, yes...
--
USA: home of the world's largest terrorist training camp.
The first thing we do is the calculation you refer to. We discuss how plausible the constancy of rate hypothesis is. (In this case, we note that the tap (faucet, to you) is capable of delivering more or less water.) Then we discuss how the inferred filling time relates to our other knowledge (does it imply the bath was half full before the house was built?) That is the first paper. It presents an interesting observation, and the most obvious interpretation, with suitable caveats.
In the second paper, we try to infer subtle effects of the constant-rate hypothesis (CR). We observe material deposited on the side of the bath at water level, and conclude that under CR, we should see these deposits uniformly continued at deeper levels. We start applying for grants to do a bath-dive expedition to observe them, but don't get funding.
In the third paper, different group calculates that, had the rate been much higher in the past, we should observe water droplets splashed on the wall. This being easily accessible, they have looked for them and found them.
The fourth through tenth papers are analyses of how fast the water flow needed to be to spash that high, how long it was high flow to explain the frequency, and how old the drops are. It takes a while before the theorists agree on the correct mathematical treatment. The question of whether the quantity of water added by dripping is significant is still within the margin of error.
Now there is sufficient interest, we finally get the grant to do the bath dive. We observe no deposits below the current level, and conclude the dripping phase has been at most a few days. The Fast Fill theory of the bath enters the textbooks.
10 years later, the principle authors of the first and third papers share the Nobel prize in Domestic Hydrology.
I am an evolutionary scientist. We don't follow your straw-man portrayal of how science works.
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That is the point. If you're say building something, for example, the Flat Earth theory is good enough. If you're traveling through a region, you use a planar map. We still have applications that use it.
Second, belief is not theory. I don't believe the Earth is flat, but that doesn't stop me from using Flat Earth Theory to get around town. A theory is a model. It attempts to explain certain observations under certain circumstances. A belief ultimately is that certain statements are true or false.
Again looking at ID, it doesn't explain crucial details of biology. Why, for example, do children of any species physiologically resemble their parents? Evolution provides this as a prediction and it ultimately hasn't been contradicted. We've even discovered the mechanism by which this occurs. Evolution predicts that species experience selection, namely, that there are traits that can help or hinder the survival and propagation of a member with that trait. This is pretty straightforward. Evolution predicts that species experience mutation. Molecular biology has detected such mutations in the DNA. Finally, evolution predicts that species will adapt to selection, ie, that beneficial traits will become more common in a population and harmful traits will become less common. This is commonly called "microevolution".
However, we can now use the above to extent to long time scales. There's no reason that evolution can't result in seperate population groups that cannot breed with each other. The fossil record has been quite useful in demonstrating the existence of evolutionary pathways for most species.
In comparison, what predictions can we make with ID? I find it telling that the theory doesn't even describe who or what is the "intelligent designer" nor the mechanism by which the designer actually changes lifeforms. It doesn't make predictions on why biology looks the way it does (eg, why isn't life silicon based?) nor place good predictions on the fossil evidence. Further, it sets up a false dichotomy between evolution and ID. For example, there's no obvious reason why a designer couldn't impose selection pressure (eg, culling of a population) and artificially evolve a species. That's what humans have done for the past 10,000 or so years with many domesticated plants and animals.
Here's a better ID theory. The global mass of bacteria is wholely or in part intelligent. Information is contained in the bateria's DNA, RNA, and perhaps proteins, and communication is performed via well-known exchange of genetic material. Modern plants and animals were evolved in order to expand the bacteria's habitat and to increase mobility and reduce communication lag. As bacteria expanded the working knowledge of evolving complex structures, they took on greater challenges including evolving fly and intelligence.
Some predictions: animals and plants harbor substantial amounts of bacteria since they were designed to do so. Bacteria should have mechanisms for imposing selective pressure on organisms. Microbes can cause disease and kill infected animals so there is a mechanism that could be used for selection. The existence of a global communication network needs to be established. Perhaps, someone can insert message tracers as DNA snippets and observe their propagation in the wild. If such a network exists, then these snippets should appear in distant locations over some period of time (perhaps measured in decades).
What makes this a useful theory is that it makes concrete predictions that can be tested. We have an intelligent designer and even some description of how the designer is intelligent (ie, how it stores information and communicates with itself). We have a mechanism by which the designer can alter life (selection via bacterial infection). We even have goals (expand environmental habitat, decrease communication lag).
Religion is the wool pulled over our eyes. Some people find that comforting and I don't fault them their beliefs. But if you were to ask me if someone with wool over their eyes can see clearly I will say no they can't. There are many brilliant people who believe in god and an afterlife. People smarter than you or I. I would not consider them to be stupid or inferior. However I would consider their belief to be illogical and irrational given the breadth of scientific knowledge and enlightenment. Athiests look at creationists the same way as you would look at an adult who still believed in the easter bunny or believed that baby's come from storks. We usually feel a little sorry for them but we can be accomidating and let them believe what they want. However if they try to start teaching those absurd ideas in a classroom in a public school we draw issue with that. To me, trying to teach ID in a science classroom is not any different from trying to teach that babies come from storks in a health or parenting class. I'm an athiest and I think I would have been one sooner had I not been afraid. It's like turning the breaker off in your house and then sticking a key into an electrical socket. Yes you know the power is off, but what if? Your told that there is a god when your a kid and that you will go to hell if you don't follow him. You grow up and don't see any evidence of god in the world. You can use logic to understand that there can't be a god. But that nagging "what if" makes you hesitate to be blasphemous because if your wrong your going to hell. Some people never get past this point and they either swing back to full blown religion, or else they stay halfway and become agnostic. They don't believe in any particular religion but won't deny the existence of a supreme being "just in case". Initially being an athiest is scary. When you die your dead, no after life. There are no miracles. There is no order or meaning to the universe. When bad things happen its random and meaningless. You have nothingto fall back on. No crutch to shield your fragile person from the harsh realities of existence. But at the same time the enlightenment is completely worth it. It's like Socrates story of a man living in a cave being too afraid to go outside where there is no roof, only the empty blackness of the sky. The entire universe of wonder could be going on outside his cave and he would never know because he is too afraid to change his world. I find it hard to trust people under a relgious influence to make rational decisions because they sometimes do things that are irrational, but in the name of a god. Like Bush talking about his crusade or that god wanted him to go to Iraq. That scares the crap out of me. What if god told him that freedom was an illusion and that the only path to freedom lay in faith. What if he made non christians 2nd class citizens. It worries me that Texas has a constitution that says no godless person can hold political office. Religion does not give way to logic. It is an irrational and illogical device that is used to control people. So in some ways, people who are religious or believe in god, are for lack of a better word, stupid.
...and knowing the British, the phrase they missed out of the original article was "of the 3% who bothered to answer our questions ...."
Something I see coming up over and over again whenever there's a discussion about evolution is silly semantic argument about the nature of the term "proof." People keep saying that scientists can never "prove" anything, only disprove things. I'm a scientist, and I would argue that this is simply a silly oversimplification without any significant value. The problem is that it implies that absolute proof is somehow attainable in the real world. It's not. The only place something can be proved is in mathematics, and as useful as math is, it's all made up. The inability of science to "prove" things is not a limitation of science, it's a demonstration of the fictitious nature of the concept of "proof" with respect to the real world.
More importantly, people make life-or-death decisions every day of their lives that are based on things they can't "prove." You can't "prove" that a twinkie isn't going to explode, but you eat it anyway. You can't prove that atoms exist, or that smoking causes cancer. By any reasonable standard, those things are considered proven, so one could argue that they're simply "proven beyond reasonable doubt." Likewise, evolution is proven beyond any reasonable doubt. To believe in atoms, but not in evolution, because it's "unproven" or "unprovable" is inconsistent.
I'm a brit too and have not known anyone in all the areas and schools I went to that did not laugh at Creationism. I know they like Ghosts and UFO's a lot and that there seem to be a lot of Paganism around, but still...
"As always the devil is in the detail. To get from one species to another (as currently determined by a pair of genetic pools) requires a viable path. Not just stepping stones but a real, viable path. For every protein, every gene, every process that is needed to support life."
Indeed. And molecular biologists have spent plenty of time working out exactly what those paths, both in specific and in general, are. Interestingly enough, living systems are a lot more plastic than most people give them credit for. Heck, there are 6 major types of human aorta morphology, all of which work about as well as the others. And the way this stuff grows is fasincatingly NOT like a strict blueprint, but rather like a recipe in which different ingredients can affect the outcome but don't necessarily turn the whole thing to mush right away.
"The conventional dogma is that this occurs through a multiplicity of small changes (we have observed such small changes in real experiments - I have seen such data from my own lab), each of which gradually moves the population (genetic drift). The problem is that whilst this is a cosy theory, there is little remenant of this."
I'm not sure what you mean by this. There is plenty of remnant of this. Not only do we have the rare examples of diatoms and snail shells showing that these changes, while they may not move at a steady pace, do generally happen gradually, but we have plenty of molecular evidence that the divergences we see happened because of natural selection and lots of mutation, both of which are characteristic processes that leave very specific marks where they've done their work.
"We should now have more species than at any time ever,"
Er, ??? Why? Are you doubting that countless species go extinct, sometimes in massive numbers? Although, it must be said: it seems like we do have one of the most diverse set of species in the history of the earth around today. We're currently in the process of killing off a good portion of it, but the globe is crawling with life in every corner, and again: species are more morphologicaly diverse than almost ever before that I can think of.
"and species should not be distinct but a continuum (if we take the slow steady mountain climb approach advocated by the likes of Dawkins)."
Not if some die out, which they very often do. But as a matter of fact we do have many continuums as well: ring species, the way hybridization has all sorts of varying levels instead of a bright line, etc.
"This is not something that makes sense but is very nice for putting very long timescales on things. Burst evolution, where dramatic environmental changes radically alter the genetic pressure on organisms whilst providing the circumstances to allow genetic change can be observed experimentally but, being unpredictable, throws all the happy 'slow steady climb' molecular clocks out of the window."
You don't know much about how molecular clocks work if you think that they don't have ways to compensate for differences in evolutionary change. Of course, you probably _definately_ don't understand how they work if you think they primarily measure rates of evolutionary change, when in fact they measure the fairly constant rates of mutation in particular sorts of non-coding sections of genetic material, controlled to detect error and changes via statistical methods.
"There are also distinct problems with establishing mechanisms for major events - evolution of sex, evolution of DNA duplication, evolution of completely novel genes etc."
The evolution of novel genes is so well documented that it's absurd to include on this list. The other two are indeed very hot questions in biology, but the problems are largely that we don't have enough evidence to determine which of many many different possibilities were the one actual mechanism. That's not at all the same thing as having a problem seeing how they could have happened at ALL. An inability to know where certain comets were in the distant past does not const
Getting back to the whole bathtub thing... I actually thought that your detailed description of how the scientific method plays out was rather clever. I maintain, however, that you wholly missed the mark. Your analysis of the tub scenario seems to imply that, with enough application of the scientific method -- which you expertly portrayed*, ID can be shown to be either valid or invalid. This, by definition, however, is impossible. Allow me to explain.
I'm tending to think you misunderstand analogies. If you give an analogy that appears to be a very good analogy, then "solve" the analogy, the answer will still be unrelated to the original problem. You appear to be assuming that the solution to the analogy is also an analogy to the original question. That is not how they work.
The analogy was originally given to "prove" that scientists make incorrect guesses. That is correct, but it left out that scientists also don't get into the dogma of presuming they are right, and all others are wrong, even in the face of evidence. The analogy was extended to show that the presumption about scientists was wrong. It was never about how the tub was or was not filled. The analogy was about how scientists would approach the problem. The analogy isn't that the tub is or is not Creation.
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