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Did Humans Evolve? No, Say Americans
Stern Thinker writes "In a 2005 poll covering 33 countries, Americans are the least likely (except for Turkish respondents) to assert that 'humans developed ... from earlier species of animals.' Iceland, meanwhile, has an 85% acceptance rating for evolution." The blurb on the site for Science magazine is less circumspect about the findings: "The acceptance of evolution is lower in the United States than in Japan or Europe, largely because of widespread fundamentalism and the politicization of science in the United States."
Well, when you look at the current leadership in this country, you can see why we don't put much stock in evolution - it apparently hasn't happened yet. (Now, where's that seperated at birth picture of the monkey and GWB?)
This
Come on, we have the evidence right in the White House.
Check out the evidence!
Full Tilt
blind belief
Maybe I'm wrong. I remember from college science class. Isn't evolution still based on a blind belief that someday in the past, life just magically began with a strike of lightning? Don't they still struggle to define what "life" is too? So although religion is a blind belief, in essence so is science?
Here's why I don't believe in evolution:
1. It doesn't agree with the fossil record. Evolution talks about small changes during millions of years. But the fossil record shows species appearing suddenly, and then staying the same over millions of years until they die out or until today.
2. Evolution does not explain the existance of complex structures in animals and does not explain genetic diversity. Genetic diversity tends to be disposed by natural selection. So too, natural selection would dispose of any genes needed to form a more complex structure.
Evolution does not make sense. Believers in evolution are driven by fear that they would not have a 'scientific' explanation for something. Fear of the unknown is a bad place to start a scientific inquiry from. Its too bad this fear drives much of science today.
The US population may not have analyzed this in so much depth as I have, but they can smell the bullshit.
I would like to ask the evolutionist thinkers what their view of creationism is all about. Personally I don't see much difference between the two fundamentally. Why would it matter if the big bang just happened, or a being caused it to happen and then natural science took its course?
These colors don't run! Not even from facts!
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
What does your god say about David Hume and the problem of induction?
How do you know that the scientific method works?
Who cares if some idiot in Kansas doesn't understand evolution. It makes no difference, weather people know and understand evolution make very little difference in our daily lives. Instead, lets teach the Germ Theory of Disease in place of evolution. It is far more disturbing that 50% of the people don't wash thier hands after using the restroom than how many don't believe in evolution. When people don't use good hygeine, they spread disease and that has a real effect on everyone.
If we do a good job of teaching the GToD, evolution will fall out of it, because people will learn how bacteria evolve to become drug resistant.
Creation is evolution. I'm not sure why they can't coexist. To God, waving a wand can take a second or a millenium. The world may have been built in 6 days but there's no saying how long a day is defined.
This is not from an atheists point of view, obviously. But athiests are lazy thinkers.
Urey-Miller Experiment tested a THEORY in a HYPOTHETICAL environment, an environment that was changed because the old "soup" theory didnt measure up to the conditions. The problem is it is anti-intellectial posers who are afraid of religion who look at the ongoing philosophical debates on the definition of life and flee into useless blind science like Abiogenesis. People who use the words of logic to pretend to dissect religion. You know, the kind of people who post badly hidden Anti-Creation propaganda on Slashdot, using their stupidity and disrespect for learning as a cover for their anti scientific agenda.
The people we're discussing in disgust while reading this story, because so many Americans are so ignorant.
You see the logic goes both ways, Scientists are trying so hard to prove there isnt a God/Creator/originatior. That they start to disregard anything that doesnt prove their theories or fit into their ideas. Check out Haekel's embryos, big ol blot on the scientific community. Incredibly smart people being duped by their own arrogance that there cannot be a God. So any evidence pointing to a creator is thrown out the window. In the meantime we have ignorant creationists pushing an unintelligent agenda because they know without a doubt that God does exist. The two sides keep pushing away because people like you know that you cannot be a scientist and believe in God. Must be an oxymoron and people like my wife do no exist or are the dumbest people alive.
BTW my wife is a geneticist Biology Professor, top of her class graduate bla bla bla, believes in microevolution and has a strong distain for anti-evolutionists. oh yea she is also a strong believer in a Creator and an infallable Bible.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
1. Since it is genetically impossible for a dog to give birth to a cat, or a bird to lay an egg from which a frog pops out, etc etc (species reproduce "after their kind"), and since evolutionary theory dictates (as far as I understand it) that the forks/mutations in species occur over millions of years, how can they occur at all in a species that doesn't live past a few decades? A dog lives what, 10-15 years? How much genetic adaptation to it's environent can it make in 10-15 years, to a point that a passes down a "new" trait to it's progeny?
2. I have never read ANY scientific article about evolution that did not contain a PLETHORA of "we think", "we believe", "it seems likely", "theoretically", and similar FAITH statements in abundance, and at the same time contained almost NO *definitive* statements at all. Why is your faith in the "scientific method" or in the "latest research" any more _noble_ than another's faith in God? You're simply replacing a faith in something you know you can't control/understand with a faith in something that you HOPE to SOMEDAY control/understand.
That seems pretty desperate, to me. Almost as desperate as blaming "fundies" for the ills of America without being able to state what a "fundie" believes. Much like the cynic who states that the Bible is "full of errors and contradictions" without being able to name one. In the rare event that one can parrot the "error" they heard of secondhand, when a reasoned and logical explanation is made of the supposed "error", the universal response is to ignore/poo poo the explanation and demand a far more empirical _evidence_ than they would ever demand of the latest hot air blowing out of Berkeley or Oxford.
I've never seen evidence of any 'missing link' of ANY species. When a "new" species is discovered, how can one empirically state that it wasn't ALWAYS here, and just gone unidentified til now? Does the difference between a doberman and a cocker spaniel qualify as "proof" of evolutionary thory? I see many posts here that refer to "mountains of evidence" for evolution, but I, as an "uneducated laymen" can poke as many (if not more) holes in that evidence as any cynic can poke in the Bible. So let's cut the bullshit. =) Self-worshipping people like (and vehemently pursue and guard) theories that suggest they are 'superior' and prevent any ACCOUNTABILITY for what they believe.
Show me anywhere that evolution (that is, where one species changes into another, one of many definitions) has ever been readily observable.
Natural selection does not produce this effect. Now you're talking about a different definition of evolve. Natural selection simply allows the best examples of a species for a certain environment to survive other those who are not suited for the environment they live in. It makes the population strong. It does not change their species.
There are many different definitions of evolve. Be careful which one you use at any given time.
I don't think terrorism is that big of a threat to this country. If it were a power-hungry minority such as the republican party would not be using it almost daily to keep power and divert attention from their anti-American behavior. Seriously, even a people as dumb as Americans wouldn't put up with this shit if we were getting attacked (or threatened with attack) when it wasn't politically useful for the republicans.
Richard Dawkins
"That is not evolution in the sense of simple beings evolving into higher life forms but rather "devolution" or genetic loss of information and decay in the gene structure."
Are you a fucking moron? There is no such thing as "evolving into higher life forms" or "devolution." There is only adaptation to the selective pressures of an environment. This doesn't make anything "higher" or "lower" forms or make them "devolve", whatever that is supposed to mean. There is better adapted to an environment (more likely to survive), there is less adapted to an environment (less likely to survive), and there is dead (failed to survive, in case you're really that stupid).
The Farewell Tour II
1. The prediction is supported but not confirmed. They found some fossils of some apes or humans. As for apes fossils there is no proof that they are human ancestors. As for humans, well they are humans already. Goes down the tube with a whooshing sound.
2. This is about microevolution that is only remotely related to macroevolution. Same here. Outrageously missing the target
3. Too few details. Reference please.
4. Phylogenetic analysis does not support anything. It has nothing to do with evolution.
5. "Fit the predictions closely" is a subjective assessment. Totally unscientific like the whole "theory". Down the tube.
6. Insect wings did not evolve from gills, that is only your unscientific hypothesis. Demonstrate evolution without missing steps, like scientists demonstrated microevolution without missing steps. So stoneflies need functional hemocyanin and they have it. Where does the evolution come?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
"Darwin predicted, based on homologies with African apes, that human ancestors arose in Africa."
Yes, because those living in Africa are less evolved than those living further away--or blacks really are sub-human. At least, that's what Darwin's contemporaries said at the time. Eugenics is/was the logical conclusion of Darwin's prediction. Hitler was merely the political manifestation of that conclusion. There was an American text-book that taught evolution in the 20s that had a five-tier system for which race was more evolved--Black, Brown, Yellow, Red, White (or was it Black, Brown, Red, Yellow White--I can't remember, but I know Black was least and White most).
Accepting evolution as true assumes that some humans are less evolved than others, which allows for value assignment.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
I wonder how much of those fundamentalists believe that the earth is not flat and that the earth turns around the sun...