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."

Comments

The Perceived Threat of Science

[RunFatBoy.net]

The current administration has been quite effective in keeping this issue in the public eye and billing it less as an issue of science and more of a threat to society. The issue has taken on the sentiment that if the concept of evolution becomes widely accepted then faith is voided and we enter moral decay (which is obviously wrong, thanks Bush). But it's definitely how a majority of Americans feel. Science threatens their faith.

Jim
http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- Exercise for the rest of us.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[rackhamh]

Science threatens their faith.

On a related note, did you hear that the Bush administration now says that bird flu is nothing to worry about? More to the point, for bird flu to be a threat to humans, it would have to evolve, and everyone knows evolution is just a theory!

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[p0tat03]

"Science threatens their faith"

You say it as if it doesn't, but it does. Science inherently threatens any form of ill-founded blind belief, and seeks to find support and evidence for all ideas. While I say this is not inherently incompatible with faith in general, it seems to be incompatible with most people's faith.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[morgan_greywolf]

Science threatens their faith.

And if science threatens your faith, perhaps you ought to re-examine your beliefs. Science and religion don't have to be mutually exclusive things. It's really just a handful of overly-dogmatic religious sects (read: fundies) that need science to be wrong on evolution (and a number of other things, for that matter), in order for their religious beliefs to be right.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[rackhamh]

Worrying about Bird Flu is so 2005. ... but that whoooshing sound of a joke flying over someone's head NEVER gets old!

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[manno]

The thing that cheeses me off the most is that this is a theological issue. It's the age old argument of literal vs. interpreted reading of the bible. It's a theological argument that has been going on between sects of Christianity for centuries. Yet they have managed to make it into a political argument some how. The literal interpretation doesn't just go against the scientific community, but also the beliefs of other Christians like Roman Catholics. It simply doesn't belong on the political stage.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[s20451]

Devil's advocate.

Your average non-scientist citizen is not likely to go and check all the sources to verify that, yes indeed, evolution is the most likely explanation for the diversity of species. So, to demand that this average citizen believe in evolution is to demand the same leap of faith as for that citizen to believe in creation. Either way, some "expert" is telling this citizen what to think about something s/he doesn't understand.

Why don't these polls include an "I don't know, I don't have time to check the facts, and it really doesn't matter in my everyday life" option? I think that would be the best response for a thinking non-scientist.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[grumpygrodyguy]

Science threatens their faith.

It's sad that most Christians base their faith on The Bible and not the teachings of Christ. This is the same problem Fundamentalist Muslims are suffering from...they confuse the Qur'an(and subsequent mistranslations and commentaries) with the spiritual message of Mohammed. Both Mohammed and Jesus promoted love, tolerance, forgiveness, and understanding. None of which is in conflict with science(the pursuit of truth).

If the direct teachings of these prophets were the focus of religious organizations(instead of using scriptures to control their followers through fear), science would be embraced by the world religions rather than shunned by it.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[MrSquirrel]

Those Icelanders have NO sense of decency. Why, once one was visiting my parents in Arizona on a cold day and he was wearing shorts! It was a freezing 60 degrees and he had the indecency to wear very revealing shorts (I could see his knees!). Them and their... ice festivals... and... beastiality (I read it on the internet -- Icelanders are notorious for polar bear rape). Go America, these colors don't run!

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[EGSonikku]

Evolution makes no claims as to the origin of life. It merly theorises what has happened to that life once it did start.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[p0tat03]

Your college science class must've failed to teach basic scientific method. The whole "lightning strike" thing is one of many theories about how life began, each with supporting and refuting evidence. The key here is that science acknowledges that it doesn't know what actually happened, readily accepts alternate theories, and when the leading theory is debunked it is celebrated and nobody gets burned at the stake.

That's the difference between blind belief and educated belief. Educated believers are willing to be challenged, and accept anything that has sufficient evidence.

Evolution on the other hand is an educated theory based on sound observation and evidence. Evolution does not define the origin of life, but rather it defines the phenomena that is readily observable whereby populations and species change over time. The exact mechanism of this process is arguable, though natural selection is the leading explanation, and has a extremely large amount of evidence in its defense.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[rackhamh]

No, evolution is based on the notion that one group of creatures evolved from another group of creatures, a notion that is supporpted by tangible evidence such as genetics, the fossil record, etc.

You're referring to the question of the origin of life (i.e. the very first living organism), which is arguably a separate issue from that of evolution.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Doc Ruby]

Yes, you're wrong. The Urey-Miller Experiment tested a theory that organic compounds evolved from inorganic compounds over time, in hypothetical ancient Earth conditions. That's nothing like the blind belief that god created the universe with a word.

It's anti-intellectual posers who are afraid of science who look at the ongoing philosophical debates on the definition of "life" and flee into useless blind beliefs like Creationism. People who use the words of logic to pretend to dissect science. You know, the kind of people who post badly hidden Creationist propaganda on Slashdot, using their stupidity and disrespect for learning as a cover for their theocrat agenda.

The people we're discussing in disgust while reading this story, because so many Americans are so ignorant.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[PriceIke]

Beliefs not based on logic cannot be swayed by logic.

What a shame that so many people believe this is an either/or thing. It makes me sad. I thought most Americans were smarter than that.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Tet]

Isn't evolution still based on a blind belief that someday in the past, life just magically began with a strike of lightning?

No. Evolution explains how one species turns into another over time. It says nothing about how the original one got there in the first place. Sure, there are various theories, such as the lightning strike you mentioned. But they're not part of the science that is evolution, (at least as the word is most commonly used).

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[zerocool^]

Which is why my god is the Scientific Method, and my religion the study of our suroundings.

There's only two classifications of things in my religion.

1.) Things we understand.
2.) Things we don't understand yet.

There isn't a "3.) Things we will never understand and aren't meant to understand, and must take on faith".

~X

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[LordKazan]

Wikipedia is your friend, biased language is not.

there are a lot of chemical reactions where "life can arise from non-life" given the proper conditions, conditions which were present on *gasp* early earth!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Evolution describes how life changes, it has NOTHING to do with how life began.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[MECC]

I thought most Americans were smarter than that.

You're thinking of Americans in the alternate-Cartman-with-beard-universe.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Elemenope]

it tells that most Americans are more likely to believe what they find desirable to believe, rather than the truth.

Hey, buddy, that's everyone. The only thing that changes are the idiosyncrasies, the individual blind spots, usually about the things that we personally or culturally choose to care about. That my fellow countrymen happen to believe a particularly embarrassing one is unfortunate, but in the grand scheme of things is hardly the ultimate sin against 'Truth'. It is a telling fact that in every stage of human history, a large portion of people believed that they had stumbled (by revelation or inductive practices or some combination thereof) onto the basic paradigm that accurately describes truth. They were all, every single one of them, wrong. Why do we believe we are different than them, that this age we are lucky enough to live in is somehow different than all those others? One need not believe in relative truth (and I don't) to believe that for the actual amount of truth that we can be honestly confident to presently hold, our current beliefs might as well be treated relatively.

I agree that it sucks for people who live in an age defined by the scientific enterprise to be lorded over militarily and economically by a scientifically stunted nation. But then so was Greece by Rome, and yet life (historically speaking) goes on.

P.S. Don't ever believe, in this age of media and relative concentration of power that the actions of the US are driven by the opinions of its citizens at large. It's very much the other way around; citizens are the played, not the players. That should be the far more terrifying realization than that rural Kansas doesn't know jack about Evolution.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[hackstraw]

Which is why my god is the Scientific Method, and my religion the study of our suroundings.

My god is the philosophy of epistemology -- the study of what, if anything, we can know.

Rumsfeld should be fired, but I love this quote:

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

-- Donald Rumsfeld

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[thing12]

If our government is run by people who think Evolution is false, they can make laws to outlaw it in schools

"Miss Crabtree - call the feds! I think Johnny's evolving!"

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[tsm_sf]

Carl Sagan had a line about how people who think that evolution and creationism are incompatible don't really understand either.

William Gibson had a line about people who don't know shit about anything, and hate the people who do.

I've got a line in the water, because I'd rather fish than listen to dipshit fundies.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[chaosmind]

Yes and no... I rather agree with the grandparent poster. The scientific method offers a process, a mechanism by which we may peacefully offer competing for confirmation or refutation by others, through strictly empirical and rational terms. If you are committed fundamentally to a belief, i.e.-the mechanism for finding the truth is MY holy book!, then your beliefs really are threatened by the methods of science.

But not all religion is fundamentalist. Building on your "lightning bolts in the slime" notion, we really do have a better story on the origin of life, and it involves little more than natural selection. Stuart Kauffman, in his wonderful book At Home in the Universe offers a compelling vision of the origin of life as autocatalytic sets. (If chemicals A,B,C catalyze chemicals D,E,F and so forth until X,Y,Z in turn catalyze the production of chemicals A,B,C, then technically we have met the first minimum requirement for life: reproduction of organic matter without conscious design.)

Kauffman's work is in turn based on Ilya Prigogine on dissipative structures, in particular the "Brusselator" (devised by the Brussels group) which may be the simplest known autocatalytic set in existence.

What makes this interesting is that Prigogine, a nobel laureate chemist, believes in God. It's the political and religious fundamentalism that becomes incompatible with the scientific method... so you're both right.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[rthille]

I'm pro abortion (limited), but I certainly believe that a fetus is alive. Just like a tapeworm. Or maybe not _just_ like a tapeworm, since the tapeworm is more independent, at least for the first months of the fetus's life. The question for me isn't whether the fetus is alive, it's whether it's viable. I believe a woman should be allowed to have the fetus removed from her body. If the fetus is viable, it should be taken out alive and given to someone who wants it, with the mother's rights terminated. Of course, the costs to save a pre-term baby can be huge, so finding someone with the desire and the money to 'take over care' of the fetus would be problematic for certain terms.
In general, I feel that contraception is a much better solution than abortion, but I find it very odd that the 'religious right' are against contraception, abortion, or spending money to help the unfortunates who end up having their unwanted children raise them. To me that's immoral, creating suffering, crime and and enless cycle of unwanted.

P.S. Ask me about the girl my wife and I are foster parents to. She the 5th child of some crack-head parents who had _all_ their kids taken away... :-(

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Gablar]

      Science is a threat to faith. God and religion are, imo, the product of the human fear to the unknown. We place god and religion in issues that we can't explain. Pain, disease, death and were we come from, were all the realm of god until science came along. The more we know of the world the more we can explain accuratly how it works. Everytime a discovery is made, God is displaced from his question answering place and accurate knowledge takes his place. That knowledge may or may not be something that we like, for example, descending from primates instead of being made by a God.

      Like it or not science is a threat to religion, even though is much closer to the "truth" than god or religion. Not everyone is comfortable knowing how and why something happened. Some people are more comfortable with "the will of god" than with reason. I think that's why is so important that accurate science is taught to children, technological stagnation awaits any civilization that has answered all the questions with God.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[hmccabe]

You must be new here.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[GreyPoopon]

Like it or not science is a threat to religion, even though is much closer to the "truth" than god or religion.

You seem to be confusing Fact and Truth. To intertwine Science with Truth would be a huge mistake. Leave the pursuit of Truth for philosophy and religion.

Not everyone is comfortable knowing how and why something happened.

Belief in one or more deities and the desire to know "how and why" are not mutually exclusive.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[SatanicPuppy]

....Okay....You're trolling, but I'll bite.

Deduction is absolutely useless in the real world, because all the premises that could be used in deductive argument are arrived at through empirical observation. Empirical observation is 100% inductive, so therefore the premises can't be suggested to have anything like a truth value, because, as you astutely pointed out, just because something is true today doesn't mean it will be true tomorrow. The sun could go out, gravity could stop working, black could be come white, anything.

So by deciding that induction is completely worthless, as you have, you seemed to have talked yourself into an ontological solipsim. I would like to know why you think this is a benefit to yourself or your argument?

It's the standard move of the creationist, to attack induction, because, of course, that is the weak point of science. All our knowledge is based on the observable world. If that should change, we'd be wrong. Whereas all of the creationists knowledge is based on God, and God is the arch-conservative....He never ever ever changes. You can construct all manner of deductive arguments using God as a premise.

Of course, if you're an athiest, all the same arguments can be constructed with purple unicorns.

I keep thinking of ditching the .sig, but creationists keep making it relevant again. Produce one tiny piece of positive evidence for creationism, and I'll listen. But beating on evolution just makes your theory look even worse.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Sirfrummel]

I concur, the only wooshing sound that happened in this circumstance was the other poster falling back in his chair.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[deathy_epl ccs]

Educated believers are willing to be challenged, and accept anything that has sufficient evidence.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you here. A very surprising number of scientists, today and throughout history, are just as unwilling to have their beliefs challenged as the fundamentalists. It expresses itself differently, but your statement is false when applied to as broad a group as you attempt to apply it to.

However, it is fair to say that some scientists embrace challenges to their belief, but by the same token... I have met fundamentalists who were willing to embrace similar challenges.

Science for some is just another flavor of religion. Once mankind gets involved with something that involves any kind of faith, even educated faith, then he will have a tendency toward irrational behavior when his faith is challenged.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Doc Ruby]

It's no troll - Urey-Miller tested a hypothesis. That makes it science. Even your wife should be able to explain that to you.

You can be a scientist and believe in god, you can be a scientist and be wrong about anything, even in your own discipline. But when you don't understand that faith explains only things that can't be tested, you're not a scientist - you're playing a science game, even if you're good at it. Good at pretending that you accept logic, when you just like to flip it about to impress your less educated fellow believers.

I don't pretend that there's evidence for the Creationism superstition, nor do I throw it out - I test it, if I can, or skeptically examine others' tests. Where is this Creation evidence you claim exists? Haeckel's embryo fraud was well over a century ago, and exposed by science. The people perpetuating it were treating his scientific props the way they were used to treating church props. The way that you treat logic like a prop.

Pitting faith against science weakens faith, even before science proves it wrong - even when science sometimes proves it right. You just realize that so much of what churches once claimed monopoly in explaining can now be explained by science, which draws their power elsewhere.

Faith has its place. It offers knowledge of phenomena we cannot test. Much of which is more important than practically all we cannot test. But which is much less reliable than fact, because we cannot test it. But faith must also yield to fact when fact is available. And we get fact by hypothesis and tests. You Creationists would throw that all away to believe in your favorite brand of infallible bible. You're free to do so, but don't expect to be taken seriously by people who reserve faith for where it is both important and necessary.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[gi-tux]

If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?

And science zealots clump all religious people together so that they can just ignore religion. I for one have room for science and religion. Religion tells me where I came from and my purpose for being here. Science explains to me how things, including the things that God created, work. My Bible doesn't attempt to explain why the sun is necessary for life to exist on earth, it just tells me that God created it and saw that it was good. I happen to love certain aspects of science. What I dislike is people that seem to think that there isn't room for science and religion from either extreme.

As to evolution, what you are talking about with the evolution of bird flu and the evolution of lower species to human are two different things. Certainly there are forms of evolution. After all Noah didn't carry two beagles, two German Shepherds, etc onto the ark, he carried two canines onto the ark and all the different breeds have evolved from those two canines by bringing out different traits via breeding (go forth and multiply as it is called in Genesis). The same is true with Bird Flu, it is still H5N? when it infects a person. However, there is no evidence of one species becoming another and that is what would have to happen for a lower form to evolve into a human.

Why can't you accept the fact that there is a being greater than man? A being that has the power to create the universe in which we live. A being that set up the rules that we discover via science. That being is God, and he is the one that is responsible for us being here today.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Nf1nk]

there comes a time in a debate when you realize that no matter how well you prove your point you have no hope of reaching your target.
when you have hit this point you may as well stop arguing.
one method of stopping the argument is to dismiss the target.
A class of people not worth arguing with are fundamentalists, (any kind) they have little of worth to add to the debate and you have no hope of winning their hearts or mind. they are commonly called fundies.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=dipshit
I have foud a reference for dipshit
dipshit Audio pronunciation of "dipshit" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (dpsht) Vulgar Slang
n.

        A foolish or contemptible person.

adj.

        Foolish or contemptible.

failing to acknowlege the advances of science and a blind faith in an old book dispite mountains of evidence to is both foolish and contempible. thus the fundies are as a group also dipshits.
it is correct to dismiss them as Dipshit Fundies.

Although calling them fundies should be enough.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Citizen of Earth]

Show me anywhere that evolution (that is, where one species changes into another, one of many definitions) has ever been readily observable.

Evolution has been readily observed in microorganisms, which is quite easy to see because they reproduce so quickly. Speciation has also been observed in at least one type of bird, a pheasant, I think, though one gets into arguments about the exact definition of the term "species", because the new species can still breed with the old one, though it almost never does. Is a polar bear a different species from a grizzly?

Natural selection does not produce this effect.

It did with polar bears and grizzlies.

Out of curiosity, are you a Bible thumper or a scientist? I can't imagine a scientist making such bold and absolute pronouncements about science.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Dr. Manhattan]

You seem to have a blind faith that the human brain is capable of understanding every facet of the universe. Why is that?

Because there is no practical way to differentiate between "something we don't understand yet", and "something we cannot understand". There isn't anything you can point to and say "that's forever incomprehensible". They used to say that about life and now we have molecular biology, for example.

As Woody Allen pithily put it, "Is knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know this?"

It makes absolutely no testable, measurable, detectable difference whatsoever. No profit of any kind is gained by assuming something is incomprehensible. If you assume something's incomprehensible, and don't try to understand it, you never will. If you assume something's comprehensible, you might eventually figure it out. In other words, the only possible test for incomprehensibility is to try to understand it. If at the end of forever you've failed, then you can tentatively conclude that maybe it's unknowable.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[rainman_bc]

You seem to have a blind faith that the human brain is capable of understanding every facet of the universe. Why is that?

First fallacy. You assume the the human brain need understand every facet of the universe. In fact, I'd argue that a single brain is probably incapable of understanding it all. But your fallacy is thinking that it's one brain that need understand it all.

Second fallacy - you assume that every facet of the universe is not understandable. That's a circular argument you cannot prove either way. You can neither prove or disprove that every facet of the universable is not understandable. However you can say that we continue to understand at a growing pace.

Seriously, it's humanity that understands things, not just a single human brain. HUGE difference.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[SatanicPuppy]

Proof that mods don't read very well.

You hold to a literal read of the bible. That can be deduced from the fact that you seem to believe the Noah myth, one of the most hilariously improbable bit of the bible.

Then you move on and seem to suggest that when H5N becomes people flu, it has become a wholly new thing, rather than an old thing with a small change. This is strong creationism; doesn't even allow for microevolution.

So don't lie and say that you're religious and you believe in science, because you don't. A literal read of the bible and a belief in science are impossible to reconcile, no matter if you believe all the science that is not contradicted in the bible.

Just another damn ID fanatic, trying to cloak his fanatacism in science. The only thing your argument has going for it is that the amount of inbreeding that would have had to occur if your belief was the correct one would explain a hell of a lot about Kansas.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[dantheman82]

Speaking of poor logic, your examples tend to fall short in the very area you are trying to bolster:

Genetic differences disallowing breeding between closely related sub-species of birds mean that the birds lost some genetic information that allowed them to breed. This in fact happens among humans where there is great pollution or other factors (chemicals, etc.) that effect reproductive abilities. So, this means that some of these birds cannot mate and produce offspring. 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.

The same goes for your population of fish. They "lost the ability to interbreed" which is a genetic loss of information - this happens all the time when you are subjected to a severe environment which hampers the ability to reproduce or move effectively, etc. This is not evolution in the sense of snail to ape to human.

I know of people who are against Darwin's evolution and are agnostic and could produce their names if you so desire. Some members of the Intelligent Design movement are agnostics, for example. The fact is that all people have an agenda, and you demonstrated yours by putting all religious people into a nice stereotype - namely, "people with problems." For someone trying to defend logic, you really should have done a better job.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[g2devi]

Nonsense.

Science only inherently threatens any form of ill-founded *literal interpretation* of a religion's holy book. Most faiths of the world outside the US don't have such literal belief. They take their books as a mix of history, allegory, and moral rules and most assume that it's the inspired word of God and many assume infallibility of the books (if reality don't match the books, then your interpretation of the allegories are wrong). But those infallibility assumptions have more to do with morality than literal historical fact or literal scientific fact (which only have transitory value). To quote the bible (since that's what most americans believe in) "Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's, and to God what is God's." (Translation, the world has demands, God has demands. Respect both and don't mix up the two.)

The Greeks and Vikings didn't believe in literalism. Buddists don't. Hindu's don't. Muslims (outside of the Wahabbists) don't. Jews don't. Catholics didn't originally, then slipped into literalism around the time of Galileo and the dark ages, and then came back to sanity around the time of the 2nd Vatican Council.

Science and non-literal faith aren't incompatible. They're complementary.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Kadin2048]

I think that you are vastly oversimplifying the mainstream "thinking Christian" (compatible with science) position. They are not mutually exclusive.

The only way that you arrive at a situation where religion and science are incompatible is when you take one too literally, or the other too figuratively, or both. If you try to sit down with a Bible and actually figure out how many times the earth has gone around the sun since Adam and Eve walked out of Eden, and then attempt to force this date as some sort of an epoch for actual phenomena, you are of course bound to fail. Rejecting the Big Bang theory or cosmology in general because you insist that the world was created in 168 hours, is similarly ridiculous. I think it is only in the United States that these points of view have become significantly mainstream, and even then I'm not sure that I would say that they are representative of the official positions of many major churches (although they may be held by people who belong to churches whose official positions and doctrine are more well thought-out).

Likewise, it is a mistake to try to extend any particular scientific discovery or theory past where it is designed to go. Trying to develop a moral philosophy from the interaction of various subatomic particles seems quite bizarre, and would probably produce a philosophy that had little bearing on actual life.

There will always be room for religion in science, as there will always be an unknown. There will always be room for God, because there will always be the question of an ultimate Creator -- what happened before the first Bang? And there will always be room for faith more generally, as there will always be uncertainty.

The problem that some religions have had, both today and in the past, is that they do not cope with the varying needs of people over time. Two thousand years ago, what people wanted from religion and God was an assurance that their crops would grow; today, people have different needs, perhaps more metaphysical than whether or not they'll starve during the winter, but acute spiritual needs nonetheless. It would be a sorry religion -- and a very sorry God -- that wasn't able to cope with that difference in needs (or, if you prefer, the different forms that the same universal spiritual needs take).

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[dhasenan]

It's possible to explain the current state of living species without evolution, and even part of the history.

Losing the ability to interbreed, though, is not strictly a loss of genetic information. It could be a loss or a gain. It could be neither--good luck getting a shih tzu to breed with a Bernese mountain dog.

Intelligent Design is not testable and makes no predictions, but other parts of the idea mentioned do. If the worldwide flood story were accurate, for instance, we'd have a relatively short period of existence followed by a catastrophic flood and then the present state, more or less. We'd expect a fossil record that supported that--a lot of layers of very similar fossils all together in the same areas. But we don't get that; instead, we get different types of fossils at different rock layers. That [stratigraphy] is one of the larger pieces of evidence against the flood theory.

Of course, God could have planted the paleontological evidence to test our faith. That argument is perhaps valid but without merit; it boils down to Last Thursdayism (a theory that states the world was created last Thursday, but designed to appear older), which is untestable and unfruitful. The simplest and best conclusion to make is that the world is as it is; and since we get different distributions of fossils at different rock layers, they were laid down at different periods, meaning there was no worldwide flood to create them all.

Now, the 'no additive evolution' theory can simply be falsified by the existence of complex structures today that did not exist in antiquity. Proving that a structure did not exist in antiquity is, however, impossible. On the other hand, 'genetic information' is an arbitrary term, a *human* term, so unless you provide a rigid definition, I can't argue theory or probability.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Thangodin]

Uh, no, what he said is that they have evolved into different species which can breed within the species but not with members of the other species. This is how we tell two species apart--they are no longer genetically compatible, and cannot interbreed.

Richard Dawkins mentions the Herring Gull and the Lesser Black-backed Gull, which cannot interbreed and are therefore seperate species. Both exist in Europe. But if you follow the population of Herring Gulls westward around the north pole, to North America, Alaska, Siberia, and back to Europe, you encounter all the intermediate stages leading to the Black-backed Gull. In each area around this ring, the gulls in that area can interbreed with their neighbours. Only when you get to Europe do you have two seperate species.

As for a lot of people being against evolution, the ID people created a petition of all the scientists who disagree with it. They have about 400 signatures so far, almost none of whom have any expertise in an area relevant to the subject. So the scientific community came up with the Steve list. Basically, you can sign it if your support evolution and your name is some variation of Steve. They have over 700 signatures so far. Since the number of scientists named Steve or something like it makes up about 1% of the scientific community, this represents about 70,000 scientists. They did it as a joke (ID is a joke, after all) but you get the point. Or at least, most people would.

Your arguments are referred to as "God in the Gaps", only the gaps here are not in science, but in your own knowledge of it. Even Behe and Dembski don't try the missing link argument anymore, because it's a joke. The reason you don't see a snail evolve into a human is that it takes millions of years, and we haven't been around that long. But we still have the DNA from our earliest pregenitors, and our proximity with other animals along the evolutionary tree can be traced by establishing how much DNA we share. We share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees. So, if God made us just the way we are, how come he built us out of spare chimp parts?

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[1lus10n]

Probably about the same time that you reject reality and substitute your own version (or one that comes forth from the pulpit).

Tell me with a straight face that evolution as a theory is wrong. I have had muslims, christians and various sects of the aforementioned tell me that. We might not understand everything about evolution, but we understand enough and have enough examples to say that it has most certainly taken place. In some cases in very condensed periods of time. (harsh conditions)

The problem of course is that most people cannot understand things that take generations to happen. It must be condensed into 30 minute blurbs with 12 minutes of garbage thrown in at random intervals. Weather I am talking about a religious service or a half hour TV show is an exercise I leave to the reader.

I will stop judging religious people when they stop trying to rule my life and take away my rights, and teach children concepts that have been outdated for decades. I do not have time to split hairs about what individual religious people do what, they lump me in with liberals and I am not one. Why should I grant them a courtesy they do not grant me ?

I also find it amusing how the same people make the statement that god allows people to live their lives and doesnt interfere, but all of a sudden he is changing the DNA of entire species ?? Sorry, pick a side and stick too it would ya ?

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Ath]

Your counter-examples and explanations are without merit. You seem to confuse genetic changes across a species with individual changes within a single living organism that have environmental causes. While the theory of evolution postulates that changes within single organisms can actually determine whether that individual organism survives and manages to breed, thereby likely passing on any genetic disposition towards a certain trait and eventually into the species as a whole, I have never heard it used to explain every single anomaly in an organism.

In regards to your point about whether religion determines someone's disposition to believe in evolution versus some other scientific theory (of which so-called Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory because it cannot be tested and verified - it is, by its very nature, non-verifiable), the mainstream religions all provide a literal explanation that says a supreme being created humans. It is a fundamental premise that is at odds with a scientific explanation of how humans came into being. There are, to be sure, plenty of people who have resolved this conflict by taking a less than literal approach to their own religious teachings. So to believe in evolution, it was their religious beliefs that had to be altered - not the other way around. Religion is pretty much self-admittedly not based on logic and rationality - it is based on faith. The two are largely irreconcilable on a logical basis unless one of them is adapted.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[syousef]

You seem to be confusing Fact and Truth. To intertwine Science with Truth would be a huge mistake. Leave the pursuit of Truth for philosophy and religion.

HUH????? Truth is a fundamental concept in science and math. For example all the algebraic manipulation you ever do with equations and inequalities rests on the fact that you've proven a fundamental concept is true and can be applied to transform that expression such that the expression still holds true.

There is subjectivity in the world of science. Emotions do come into play. The latest theories are too often presented as fact. These are all human failings and failings of the scientific institutions we create. However trying to separate "fact" and "truth" is a strange notion. In the end a "fact" must be proven to be true. I suspect that you have no understanding of either concept.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Durandal64]

This is the problem with people who don't understand science. They see things as black and white. Science is about degrees of accuracy. Evolutionary theory is not wrong. It happens to be highly accurate, and that will simply never change. There are some things which is cannot explain, but that doesn't change the fact that there are mountains of things which it can explain. If a new theory comes along that explains everything evolution does and more, that theory will be superior, but evolution will not be wrong or invalidated. It will remain the highly accurate theory that it is today. Conceptually, it may be incorrect (in the description of the mechanism), but it will still be able to generate useful predictions.

You might as well claim that all those mechanical engineers using Newtonian mechanics to make cars are "wrong", too, because as we all know, the theory of special relativity replaced Newton's laws of motion. But oh wait, it turns out that the differences between Newton's laws and relativity are insignificant below 0.6c.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Ian Bell]

So, if God made us just the way we are, how come he built us out of spare chimp parts?

Maybe God is a programmer. Code reuse is sure what I'd call an Intelligent Design.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Thangodin]

Yeah, but you usually fix the bugs. Our eyes are built inside out, the birth canal should not go through the pelvis (the opening is too small for our huge human head, requiring babies to be born with immature brains and women to have problematically wide hips), the size of our brains has squashed our sinuses and pushed our jaws out of alignment, etc, etc.

Can you imagine the comments in the code?

// I'm not happy with this but it *seems* to work...

// HACK HACK HACK HACK HACK

// Old generic mammal code, needs to be replaced!

// Required by large brain code--refactor if time permits

// Copied from chimp project--doesn't really work well there either.

// FIX ME!!!

I wouldn't want him working on my project...

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[lotusburg]

That Dawkins does not suffer fools gladly is well-known. That he shows convincingly that evolution is not only possible but demonstrable to an intelligent (not necessarily "well-educated") layperson is a tribute to his grasp of science. Read "The Blind Watchmaker", "The Selfish Gene", and then try to argue "faith". He may be a "zealot" in the sense of "inspired, enthusiatic" but not as "fanatical or dogmatic" like many religious folk I meet. Read him first, then think.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Brett Johnson]

The most apparent flaw is that the theory of Evolution as I understand it proposes that living, conscious creatures were generated from inanimate matter.

Evolution occurs in increments - some big, but most very small. The origins of life are believed to be extremely simple organic molecules that had some ability to replicate. [See research into the origins of life, such as the primordial soup experiments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life/ ] Complex attributes, such as binocular vision, opposable thumbs, and consciousness arrive much later in the evolutionary timline. This relates to your second "observed flaw":

Another, albeit less easy to understand flaw is that the theory of Evolution proposes that higher forms of life (e.g. humans) Evolved from lower forms of life (e.g. monkeys/apes).

This pattern is driven by the "survival of the fittest" mechanism described by Darwin in the book. Evolution is spurred by mutations in the genome [mutations caused by transcription error, radiation/chemical damage, etc]. Most mutations are benign. Many mutations are detrimental - resulting in disability and/or death. Some mutations may allow an organism to better survive in its environment - better camouflage, faster attack/escape, ability to digest different "food", etc. Organisms that are more likely to survive are more likely to live long enough to procreate and pass on those beneficial attributes. [See http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/1 1/18_smallpox.shtml/] Some mutations are both detrimental and beneficial - the defect that causes sickle-cell anemia also provides some protection against malaria. [See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/2/l_0 12_02.html/]

Our definition of "higher forms of life" is obviously biased, but we could probably agree it involves the addition of some attribute that increases the complexity of the organism in such a way as to significantly improve its chance of survival. The increased brain mass of humans allowed us to push our use of tools and language to the point where we could hunt and gather more effectively, communicate abstract ideas, maintain a record of experiences, radically adapt ourselves to our environment and our environment to ourselves, and ponder the origins of the universe and life.

Re:The Perceived Threat of Science

[Thangodin]

It is true that the moment of destination of our soul to Hell or Heaven is predetermined, but the only way to learn that is to live a life, to make choices, you cannot live a life without making choices. So what we believe and we hope for that our final destination will be Jannah, not Jahannam. It is emotional thing. I just do not want to go to Hell, so in order to function normally I simply must to believe that I am good, that I deserve the ultimate Mercy. It is a survival thing.

But the point still remains that the final decision of where you go is predetermined by God at birth. Your choices, according to this view, are an illusion. God creates some people with the certain intent of condemning them, and there is nothing they can do about it. This is profoundly cruel. I wouldn't do this to people, and I wouldn't even give busfare to, let alone bow down and worship, a God who did it. So how is it that I can be more compassionate, and therefore more perfect, than God?

This is no small matter. To accept cruelty in God is to reserve judgment about all cruelty, on the grounds that it might be right, because God does it. This is not a moral absolute, but complete moral relativism. And this cuts right to the heart of the distinction between the traditions of Islam and those of Judaism, Christianity, Greek philosophy, and science. In Islam, what is Good is what God wills. In the others, the Good is determined by the law, which may be established by God but which binds God as well. Having laid down the law, God is not free to change his mind; he is subject to the same judgement as we all are. The law always stands; the laws of the church, of the courts, and of nature. This establishes a tradition of precedence which allows incremental gains, however slow and uncertain they may be. But without the stability of this idea of a law which binds all, you have individuals who claim to know the mind of God (a heresy in itself) who dispense with laws as they see fit--God can, after all, change his mind if he is not bound by any covenant. The society is stuck in an endless trap of feudalism, as one cult of personality is replaced by another, much the same way that kings suceeded each other. Since God never makes personal appearances, fatwas are pronounced on the whims of Imams whose qualifications may be sketchy at best. The people have only the Imams' claims that God is guiding them. This has held the nations of the Muslim world in a state of perpetual medieval chaos to this day--unable to make any headway, they remain the pawns in the games of great powers. And unfortunately, we have Fundamentalist Christians who would like to dispense with the tradition of law as well, in favour of their own interpretations of scripture. They're the ones who claim that Revelations calls for a liberal sprinkling of nukes in the Middle East. This is really not a world-view that you want to encourage. And I'm sorry if all of this offends you, but it's true, and there is simply no more polite way to put it.

Religious beliefs can change as our understanding of God changes. In the story of Abraham, he wanders into the land of Moria to sacrifice his son, and desists when an angel tells him not to. Moria is greek for folly, and it was not Jehovah, but Moloch, who demanded the blood sacrifice of children. This is a story of the changing of the Gods--Abraham went up the mountain with Moloch, and came down with Jehovah. God does change, as our understanding of God does. If your God is cruel, you probably have him wrong, which means that you are worshipping a false God. This is not just a function of scripture, which is after all the work of human hands, however brilliant the inspiration--even Mohammed confessed that he sometimes got it wrong--but also a matter of interpretation, in this case yours and those instructing you.

To say that we cannot understand or judge the imputed character of God is the same as saying that we must suspend our own moral judgement. This is what I meant when I said you had surrendered all moral

Note that is hopefully obvious...

[daveschroeder]

...the idea among Americans that humans didn't "evolve" from earlier forms of animals isn't new, and definitely hasn't changed markedly since 2000.

I'd hope that would be obvious to most people. The figures are mostly unchanged for decades, so the assertion that this is because of "widespread fundamentalism" and the "politicization of science" seems to be somewhat of a politically motivated assertion in itself.

Note that about one third of Americans reject the concept of evolution. It's unfortunate that even if people do want to have a religious or spiritual belief, they can't reconcile it with fairly firmly established scientific truth.

Further note that "fundamentalist religions", as the study refers to them as, are also not new in the United States. A lot of people would like to think that these people have sprouted up from nowhere in the last 6 years, but that's simply not the case.

Re:Note that is hopefully obvious...

[Chris Burke]

Evolution isn't a scientific truth. It's a theory.

Changes of species over time is a fact, in the sense that we've observed it. Explanations for how this occurs and what paths it has taken in the past are theory, and a very well established and emperically backed theory at that. Still, I'll accept this as a useful instance of pedantry.

Re:Note that is hopefully obvious...

[btlzu2]

So is relativity. It's still considered the best explanation of the dynamics of moving bodies.

people love to get hung up on semantics that they really don't even understand. the truth is that the Theory of Evolution is as much fact as the notion that the earth revolves around the sun. there is no contradictory evidence and mountains of overwhelming supporting evidence.

if there wasn't some unsubstantiated book that contradicted the concept of evolution, you'd believe it in a second, just as you believe the earth revolves around the sun.

Re:Note that is hopefully obvious...

[tbone1]

It's certainly been around since 1620.

One little-regarded fact is that the Pilgrims got to North America after the Jamestown colony started. The Pilgrims were such a pain in the gluteus that even the Dutch, the Dutch mind you, kicked them out. At the people of time Jamestown were leading a near subsistence living; the markets for cotton and tobacco would become important later. And here came a ship of fools whose beliefs were basically intolerant communists and religious radicals, bringing nothing to help the colony economically, and would expect to be fed. Oddly enough, when the Jamestown colonists heard this, they bribed the Mayflower captain to dump them off where all the cod fishing was going on up north.

(For the record, I am descended from some of those Jamestown colonists.)

And let's not forget the grand European tradition of sending their religious loons to North America; the results of this should be obvious.

Re:Note that is hopefully obvious...

[daveschroeder]

How is what I said a troll?

The fact of the matter is that there are MANY people who are trying to make things similar to this out to be some kind of a new occurrence, either implying our directly stating outright that this is something that has resulted from the current administration. I don't care how many fundamentalist idiots think they "have the ear" of the President. They simply don't.

"Faith-based initiatives", as architected by the administration, is not necessarily a bad idea. I'm not for blurring the lines between "Church" and "State" at all. But to not recognize that there are religious people out there who can ALSO do a great deal of good in communities, and do even more good when provided with assistance similar to what other non-profits and similar organizations get, is ignorant. Do a lot of these people want to use them as some kind of evangelical platform? I'm sure they do. Can "slippery slopes" exist? Sure. But to completely discount any value of the work of people who also happen to be affiliated with any number of religious organizations, some almost completely benign in nature from an evangelical standpoint, is foolish.

And as to the only other things I can even think of to which this might be referring:

Intelligent design - has NO place whatsoever in any course material on biological sciences, except as perhaps to note that ID is in fact NOT "science", and is merely a philosophical idea at best. But does it have a place in the "classroom"? Absolutely. In a religious studies class, or perhaps a philosophy class. But not a science class. This administration's position on ID is effectively neutral, which does allow some backwards elements to push ID as a real scientific alternative in science classrooms, when it's not. But this isn't something that's come from the top levels of government.

Human embryonic stem cell research - coming from the institution that currently licenses nearly ALL of the available US human embryonic stem cell lines, this is an important issue. But there's also nothing to say that human embryonic stem cells are a panacea, for anything. They are a hotbed because it involves destroying something that is technically "human life", from a scientific perspective, but is already part of a system that discards the embryos in the pursuit of a something that is societally accepted; namely, the creation of families. The problem is that there is not an endless supply, and it's all well and good to argue that they'd be thrown away anyway. Anyone who understands the basics of supply and demand knows that when research needs for new human embryonic stem cells exceeds supply, we have what I would hope would be a fairly hefty ethical dilemma on our hands: when, and at what stages, is it acceptable to end "human life" for the benefit of individuals or mankind at large? This question shouldn't be overlooked in the name of "research". Likewise, the intrinsic value of research and learning shouldn't be discounted for political goals.

In sum, I wasn't trolling. Everyone seems eager to blame everything on the "current administration", even though the summary doesn't say it. I'm sure that most of the other comments here (which I haven't even read yet), will be reflective of that. It's not trolling to point out that ignorant people are nothing new, particularly in the US. I'm not saying some of the environments that are enabled by SOME in the Republican party aren't to blame for certain aspects of this.

By the way, some people believe that the US (and indeed the West at large) needs to take a very aggressive foreign policy stance on things like militant Panislamic radicalism. Some people also believe that the problems in the mideast aren't a monster of the US's (or West's) creation exclusively, or even mostly. Some people understand that it's possible for a variety of conditions to exist such that a tyrannical, fascist philosophy will grow, like it has among some Islamic radicals similar to some beliefs in Christianity in the 11th century, and that the US i

Re:Note that is hopefully obvious...

[zerocool^]

Right, "Theory" in science, and "Theory" in popular conversation are not the same thing. When you say "I don't know where I left my keys, but I've got a good theory", you mean hypothesis.

A "Scientific fact" is usually something that can be expressed as a simple equation or formula. Anything that can't be reduced to that level of certainty probably will never be anything but a Theory.

Re:Note that is hopefully obvious...

[btlzu2]

i don't think so whatsoever. the good thing about science is it systematically corrects itself via peer review when contrary evidence arrives--even if "correction" means scrapping the whole thing. That's what WORKS about science.

that said, when the entire fossil record we have supports evolution and predictions are made and proven true, I don't think I need to worry about semantics. It's fact.

Some predictions made based on evolution:

• Darwin predicted, based on homologies with African apes, that human ancestors arose in Africa. That prediction has been supported by fossil and genetic evidence (Ingman et al. 2000).
• Theory predicted that organisms in heterogeneous and rapidly changing environments should have higher mutation rates. This has been found in the case of bacteria infecting the lungs of chronic cystic fibrosis patients (Oliver et al. 2000).
• Predator-prey dynamics are altered in predictable ways by evolution of the prey (Yoshida et al. 2003).
• Ernst Mayr predicted in 1954 that speciation should be accompanied with faster genetic evolution. A phylogenetic analysis has supported this prediction (Webster et al. 2003).
• Several authors predicted characteristics of the ancestor of craniates. On the basis of a detailed study, they found the fossil Haikouella "fit these predictions closely" (Mallatt and Chen 2003).
• Evolution predicts that different sets of character data should still give the same phylogenetic trees. This has been confirmed informally myriad times and quantitatively, with different protein sequences, by Penny et al. (1982).
• Insect wings evolved from gills, with an intermediate stage of skimming on the water surface. Since the primitive surface-skimming condition is widespread among stoneflies, J. H. Marden predicted that stoneflies would likely retain other primitive traits, too. This prediction led to the discovery in stoneflies of functional hemocyanin, used for oxygen transport in other arthropods but never before found in insects (Hagner-Holler et al. 2004; Marden 2005).

Re:Note that is hopefully obvious...

[Akaihiryuu]

The people that spout the rhetoric "evolution is a theory, not a fact" just plain don't know the meaning of the word "theory". Here's the best definition of the word I could find:

"In science, a theory is a proposed description, explanation, or model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation. It follows from this that for scientists "theory" and "fact" do not necessarily stand in opposition. For example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theory which explains why the apple behaves so is the current theory of gravitation."

Sure, in scientific theory there is always room for stuff to be proven wrong and for improvement. Relativity superceded Newton's laws. Does that mean Newton was wrong and we had to throw all his laws out? No, it just means that he assumed that the conditions under which his observations were made were the same everywhere, he didn't know about relativity. His laws still hold perfectly true under certain conditions. Einstein didn't prove him wrong, he merely came up with a new theory that took that into account. Scientific advancement is building on the shoulders of giants, new theories build on top of existing ones, clarify them, sometimes prove certain points wrong, but it's very rare for an entire theory to be completely wrong. Sure, evolution as we understand it now may not be completely accurate, there may be more factors that we don't know about, things like that. However, learning more about it and clarifying things that we don't understand doesn't invalidate the original theory, it merely adds to it. Saying it's a "theory, not a fact" just shows the ignorance of these people...proving points of a theory wrong doesn't invalidate the entire thing, it merely clarifies and adds to it.

Re:Note that is hopefully obvious...

[Chris Burke]

Ring species are the best example that spring to mind -- a species develops and spreads around a natural barrier, like a mountain range, changing as it goes, until the diverging populations meet at the other end of the barrier. All along the ring, populations can interbreed, however at the point at which they meet the populations cannot.

I think there's been something done in a lab with flies, creating non-cross-breedable mutations, but I'm not certain so I can't give you a cite.

But the thing is, you're basically talking about the difference between micro-evolution (changes within a species) and macro- (creation of new species). If you accept micro-evolution, then it is only logical to also accept macro. If you take a population of one species, and separate it into two species with no contact with one another, then each of those populations will experience different mutations within itself, i.e. different paths of micro-evolution. Eventually these divergent paths will grow enough apart that were you to remove the barrier between the two populations that they would no longer be able to interbreed. Presto-chango, you've got macro-evolution, because macro-evolution is really just micro-evolution operating on separate populations.

Otherwise you're saying that a species can change over time, but never enough that it would be unable to breed with one of its ancient ancestors or with members of the species that have also changed over time yet not shared changes.

Note that the poll only covered Japan and Europe

[bunions]

I can't believe I'm trying to defend America's honor by pointing out that we may still be better than Burma or Pakistan. :(

Praytell!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some claim politization. I say Americans are simply observant. Take a look around in America lately, would you believe evolution?

Perhaps they're right!

[greenguy]

I, for one, consider George W evidence that we some of us have evolved very little from monkeys.

Sigh

[SatanicPuppy]

Yea yea, we suck. Who were the last people to accept Coninental Drift? Americans. We don't believe in global warming, we don't believe in evolution, but 50% still believe we found WMDs in Iraq. If we couldn't brain drain scientists from other countries, we'd probably still be living in caves.

I just don't get it. What is the deal with people never changing their minds, or letting in new information? Most people aren't stupid...I'm sure the average person in Iceland isn't any smarter than the average american (Kansas excluded). It could just be the religious thing; a lot of european social democracies are much less religious than we are. I mean, I understand we're not a pro-intellectual country, but there is a huge difference between not rhapsodising about your elite scientific tradition, and being completely averse to new knowledge.

You can't even blame it on modern schools...We have a tradition of this type of mental blindness going back more than a century.

Re:Sigh

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I just don't get it. What is the deal with people never changing their minds, or letting in new information?

Do you remember back in elementary school and then high school when you were taught critical thinking, logic, problem solving, and the scientific method as applied to making everyday decisions?

Yeah, nobody else was taught any of that either. Instead we were all subjected to mindlessly memorizing facts by rote, day after day, year after year.

You can't even blame it on modern schools...We have a tradition of this type of mental blindness going back more than a century.

Public schools in this country were based upon the model of mental institutions, with a healthy dose of military brainwashing techniques. I can certainly blame them.

Re:Sigh

[porcupine8]

50% still believe we found WMDs in Iraq.

*cough* Well, technically, we did. Scroll down to 2004. Of course, a few canisters of nerve gas weren't really what most people were expecting out of the WMDs, but technically, they were there, and nerve gas counts as a WMD. In fact, sarin was one WMD that Iraq had specifically been told to destroy.

I remember the day these were found. I happened to look at foxnews.com that day, because I was curious what they were saying about the war. And the sarin was on the front page. I couldn't find a *single reference* to it anywhere on CNN, even with a search. I'm not saying that Fox News isn't biased (because that would be a ridiculous thing to say), but it made me wary of CNN as well. I'm not sure I believe wholeheartedly in the whole liberal media bias thing, but I definitely take everything from BOTH sides with a bigger grain of salt now.

Re:Sigh

[Random Utinni]

The problem lies not with the people, as Americans are as smart as anyone else, but with the educational system. In the US, only those that get to college are taught to ask questions and challenge any preconceived notions that they have. Even then, not all colleges to an adequate job of it.

Thus, the majority of the population that has a high school education at best has never been taught to change their minds. Instead, they are taught to learn material and repeat it. When what they are taught (at church, or on the TV/radio) that the world is 6000 years old, that global warming is a liberal hoax, or that we were divine creations dropped into the Garden of Eden, that's what they repeat. They were never told that they could question what they hear, nor that they should.

You want to fix this problem? Be willing to pay higher property taxes, attend school board meetings, and push for changes to the curriculum that encourage curiosity and questioning... Then maintain the effort for a generation so that the kids who start with the program in kindergarden can progress through the system and go into politics.

And you can blame it on modern schools... the problem is the definition of "modern". Schools have been focused on churning out industrial workers (factory-workers, etc.) for the last century. That's the "modern" model. Now that we're largely post-industrial, we notice the need for people who can reason and think, as opposed to people who only had to read, write, and do basic arithmetic. We need to take a long, hard look at what the current school curricula are designed to teach, and work from the ground up. Moreover, the more recent fixation on testing to academic standards only exacerbates the problem; we're telling schools that so long as kids can regurgitate information, they're okay.

Re:Well...a little of both?

[btlzu2]

But, who knows...I guess I often think of something I heard someone say: "If humans evolved from apes...why are there still apes?"

Simply because evolution doesn't work that way. Just because a mutation occurs and creates a branch in the evolutionary tree, doesn't necessarily mean that the ancestor must die. A balance can be achieved among the mutated branch and the original species.

Re:Well...a little of both?

[bunions]

"I guess I often think of something I heard someone say: "If humans evolved from apes...why are there still apes?"

Maybe you should think a little more.

Re:Well...a little of both?

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

because you don't know the very first thing about evolution.

humans did not evolve from apes. humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor.

apes are just as evolved as humans. evolution does not have a goal. apes are not trying to become human. everyone is just trying to survive in their environment as best as they can.

Re:Well...a little of both?

[nizo]

Ahh, but humans didn't evolve from apes; they shared a common ancestor (who no longer exists). Nowhere in evolution does it state we descended directly from apes, current day or otherwise.

Re:Well...a little of both?

[polyomninym]

It's called a fork in development. Consider OpenBSD and FreeBSD.

Rants

[whitehatlurker]

Why wasn't the Science article linked to, rather than a newspaper?

The article is about the US, Japan and a whole swack of European countries (presuming that I can include Turkey as European). Okay, but what about the rest of the world?

Where is the "OK, this is lame" selection?

Re:ugh

[nizo]

Well, if people vote someone into office based mostly on the candidate's belief that evolution is false, then it would have a direct impact on the daily lives of all Americans. Now if everyone would simply vote for candidates based on relevent issues (like, oh I don't know, healthcare/education/etc) we would be fine.

What's with Slashdot and Evolution anyway?

[Kunta Kinte]

And according to this study 64% of respondents believed that aliens have contacted humans.

Many, many people all of the world do not 'get' science. It has nothing to do with religion. This happens all over the world.

Proof

[Shadow Wrought]

The roughly third percent of the US population who do not believe in the evolution of humans cited themselves as proof...

Re:Well...a little of both?

[jfengel]

Because apes are pretty good at being apes.

A "daughter species" doesn't necessarily kick the parent species out of its niche. That's common when the environment changes but doesn't eliminate the old environment, or when the old environment splits into to different parts. Humans evolved from tree-dwelling apes who ventured out into the encroaching grassland. That selected for apes which walked on their hind legs at the expense of prehensile feet, but the trees were still there and apes live in them to this day.

Go into an ape's niche and you'll find yourself massively out-competed. You'd make a lousy chimpanzee.

Sometimes a daughter species does compete with, and outcompete, the parent species, and drives it into extinction. We appear to be working on that pretty vigorously. In a century or so the answer to the question "Why are there still apes?" may be "There aren't." But it doesn't really change the answer: new species come all the time without destroying the old ones.

Remember that from the evolutionary point of view, humans aren't "better" than apes, any more than apes are "better" than fish or fish are "better" than amoebas. Each one fits into a niche without driving out the older species. It's only our bias that puts us on the top of an evolutionary ladder.

It's not really survival of the fittest. In fact, that which survives, survives. And when the environment changes, it stops surviving.

Arrrgg...please don't lump me in with zealots

[billmaly]

For the record, I'm conservative, I voted Republican in 2000 and 2004. Yes, it's all my fault, let's move on.

I'm against the idea of abortion but think it should be legal. I don't like flag burning, but I think an amendment against it is a silly idea. I don't care about gay marraige, it shouldn't be banned, but before we allow it, we need to take a careful look at all the societal and economic consequences.

All that said, I am also decidedly NON religious and think that Creationism and Intelligent Design are fairy tales for children. PLEASE do not color me and all the other conservative red stater's in with the religious right. They're not connecting with reality, and I feel bad for those people who continue to blindly follow the paths of organized religion (which has done OH SOOOO much good for the world over the last several years). <sp<sp>We don't ALL live in Je$u$land (perhaps geographically, but not mentally), and some of us choose to follow science, watch the Discovery Channel instead of Pat Robert$on, and sleep in on $unday morning rather than gathering to worship at the altar of Chri$t.

Thus endeth my rant. Thanks for listening. Go Darwin.

Re:Arrrgg...please don't lump me in with zealots

[dR.fuZZo]

I don't care about gay marraige, it shouldn't be banned, but before we allow it, we need to take a careful look at all the societal and economic consequences.

This isn't building a highway, it's people's lives. Would you have told Abe Lincoln to make sure he fully understood all the societal and economic consequences before he delivered the Emancipation Proclamation? There's no way he could have known the full impact it would have. But, that doesn't matter, because it was the right thing to do. You don't do impact studies before you acknolwedge people's rights. You acknowledge and uphold people's rights because we (supposedly) live in a free society, and it is immoral to do otherwise.

Re:Arrrgg...please don't lump me in with zealots

[FleaPlus]

Would you have told Abe Lincoln to make sure he fully understood all the societal and economic consequences before he delivered the Emancipation Proclamation?

Yes. And Lincoln certainly did try to limit the consequences -- there's a reason the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the seceding states, leaving those in Union states under bondage.

Re:Politicization of science isn't an issue there?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

No, it wasn't. It was the evidence.

News for Nerds

[Doc Ruby]

You know those jocks that beat up nerds in highschool for being "too smart"? Those jocks are running America. And you are still the nerds.

Re:Bad example.

[JohnnyCannuk]

You might want to provide a real link to back up that assertion. Degrading mustard gas shells from the Iran-Iraq war in the 80's do not constitute WMD, no matter how much you silly conservatives try to say differently.

Hans Blix said they didn't have them. Scott Ried said they didn't have them. And except for a long forgotten stock pile of shells, they have never been found. No nukes, no mobile weapons labs, no sarin gas missle. Nothing.

Re:Bad example.

[sith]

I know it's going totally off topic, but come now. Do you have to recite that to yourself each night, to make sure you keep believing it?

So, all along in the run up to the war, you thought we'd find 500 discarded (in quantities of one or two) pre-first-Gulf-War weapons that couldn't have been fired even if someone wanted to? You were really hoping that we could launch a war resulting in the deaths of more than 2500 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis, in order to find what our own defense officials say no longer qualified as weapons of mass destruction? That's really what you were expecting? Man, I wish someone had clued me in...

Re:ugh

[SatanicPuppy]

Well, I mean if you're arguing that we should be a feudal society, where the elite understand the issues, and the masses wallow around in ingnorance with no say in things, fine.

But if we're going to be a democracy, people need to have a basic understanding that the world is not about pixie dust and fairy tales. They need enough basic understanding to cast an intelligent vote, and to be able to recognize when someone's shoveling a pile of horseshit.

Basically, that's why democracy sucks: people can't be bothered to be anything other than ignorant.

Re:Bad example.

[Chris Burke]

Each of which pre-dated the First Gulf War, and had not been maintained, making them useless for the function for which they were originally intended, the function that had us so scared that we invaded the country. They are not "partially diminished", they are "functionaly disabled non-weapons".

The claim was that Saddam had continued his WMD programs after the first war and had continued to build and maintain an arsenal. Everyone knows he had one before the first war, and that he did a bad job of accounting for them, and nobody says or said this wasn't so.
It is that claim which has been proven false, and the discovery of only old, unmaintaned, useless weapons actually reinforces the fact that the original claim was a lie.

Saddam had no working chemical weapons when we invaded, that major motivation for the war was a sham and lie, and since you actually have the facts in front of you but choose to misinterpret them this shows that of the 50% who believe it to be true you are part of the sad subset who wants to believe that it is true.

Re:Well...a little of both?

[Guido von Guido]

I guess I often think of something I heard someone say: "If humans evolved from apes...why are there still apes?"

It's the same magic that allows one half of a family to move to America, and the other half to stay in Europe!

See, it's not all or nothing. Evolution happens to populations. When one population becomes isolated from another population, they will evolve differently given enough time.

Re:Of those who say 'no'...

[meringuoid]

I find the lack of 'intermediate' species, (like fish who are starting to grow legs, or whatever) difficult for me to accept. I'm asking myself why these species are not common in nature. Does that mean I cannot accept scientific understanding, or does it mean I'm observent enough to have more questions?

Probably means you've misunderstood the theory. Oh, and overlooked the amphibians, too.

Suppose there's a world in which there are fish in the sea but no vertebrates on land (the insects got there millions of years earlier, though). A fish moving towards the amphibian lifestyle has competition in the sea, but no competition on land and if it plays its cards right it can flourish. In time some of its descendants might come to live entirely on land.

Fast forward half a billion years. Now land and sea are both well stocked with life adapted to all available niches. What role now for a fish trying to make a living on the shore? Not much. Seagull bait. Between the well-adapted fishes still in the sea and the well-adapted animals on land, the intermediate has no niche.

Intermediate forms, in general, are dead. This is why so many people are out in the world digging for fossils. You wouldn't expect to see a half-fish-half-mammal in the world today, but somewhere in the past you might hope to dig up a fossil of one of the earliest vertebrates to settle on land.

I believe

[Phoenix666]

in evolution because I personally evolved from a lower life form--I used to be a Republican.

I don't really..

[Tracer_Bullet82]

mind people rejecting evolution.

as long as they're consistent.

In the event of a bird flu outbreak in humans, they should not ever take a vaccine or medicine for it.

There win-win.

Re:Bad example.

[SatanicPuppy]

Clearly it does. Some moron modded him informative. =P

This is the actual report saying no WMDs were found in Iraq.

Damn liberal CIA. Always twisting the truth. Gotta listen to Fox News, because, you know, they're Fair and Balanced.

Not quite....

[cold fjord]

A fine anti-Bush troll/joke, but a few facts are in order....

WASHINGTON - All year, the government has promised stepped-up testing to see if bird flu wings its way to the United States. On Monday, the Bush administration announced those tests got a hit -- but the suspect isn't the much-feared Asian strain of the virus.

In almost the same breath, Agriculture Department officials announced that routine testing had turned up the possibility of the H5N1 virus in the two swans on the shore of Michigan's Lake Erie -- but that genetic testing has ruled out the so-called highly pathogenic version that has ravaged poultry and killed at least 138 people elsewhere in the world.

"We do not believe this virus represents a risk to human health," declared Ron DeHaven, administrator of USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. "This is not the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus that has spread through much of other parts of the world."

Re:Not quite....

[Mister Whirly]

And in other news....

Global warming doesn't exist
The earth is flat
Microsoft Vista is out and universally loved by all
The check is in the mail

Re:Not quite....

[rackhamh]

I'm a little confused by such a serious reply to a clearly non-serious post... still, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. The fact that two swans don't have the particular strain of virus that people are worried about doesn't seem like much of a factual smack-down, as it were...

Re:Not quite....

[Lijemo]

By that logic, say they found two people who they thought were terrorists, but further investigation revealed that they were not terrorists after all. By your logic, this would be evidence that terrorism isn't really a threat to the country, since all evidence shows that these two individuals are not a threat.

Re:Not quite....

[Dr. Manhattan]

this would be evidence that terrorism isn't really a threat to the country

Terrorism isn't a threat to this country. Terrorists can cause upset and, sometimes, kill largish numbers of people. (Nowhere near as much as traffic accidents or obesity or cancer or workplace accidents, but somewhat significant.) They can't threaten the survival of the United States. Sure, it makes sense to take some precautions against it, but (for example) a wholesale restructuring of our legal system is disproportionate. (And largely ineffective anyway, and has too many bad side effects. Go read up on the Red Scare.)

that's a lie

[Scudsucker]

Yes, they found some old stuff, but it had decayed to the point of being usless of a weapon. It's not a weapon of mass destruction if it can't cause mass destruction.

Threats to Faith

[meringuoid]

This line of thought reminded me of a post I made a while back. I got quite condemnatory about the biblical inerrantists.

To my mind, they're as much idolaters as any Bronze Age primitive bowing before a golden statue. Their idol isn't a graven image in stone or metal, but in paper and ink, and no less false for it. They worship the Bible, not God.

Ah, here it is: Biblical Literalism Is Idolatry.

Did you read the article?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your average non-scientist citizen is not likely to go and check all the sources to verify that, yes indeed, evolution is the most likely explanation for the diversity of species. So, to demand that this average citizen believe in evolution is to demand the same leap of faith as for that citizen to believe in creation

It seems to me the most appropriate solution to this problem is adequate science education in the public schools.

Why don't these polls include an "I don't know, I don't have time to check the facts, and it really doesn't matter in my everyday life" option? I think that would be the best response for a thinking non-scientist.

Did you read the article? These polls did include an 'I don't know' option.

To The Idiot Who Tagged This Article 'Flamebait'

[thatguywhoiam]

Thank you for proving the point of the fucking article. Kudos.

(yeah, I know this response is flamebait. I don't care. It needs saying.)

Remember context, and your own quote

[CrazedWalrus]

"Insightful", indeed. There's very little insight to be had in your post, I'm afraid. Be careful focusing on six words and making a generalization. To ancient folks, and to some degree modern ones, which god you identify with determines which set of rules you follow.

In many cases, "religious law" seems to have been "engineered" in a way. In other words, the reason for the law was not really religious in nature, it was pragmatic.

Examples in health:

Don't eat food XYZ. Why? Because God said so. In reality, they likely noticed that people who ate XYZ wound up getting sick or dieing of food poisoning more often. In reality, it was probably due to bacteria proliferating in certain types of food more than others. For them, it was wrath of their god. The result? Dietary laws.

Circumcision has long been protested as "pointless mutilation", which it may well be. However, there's strong evidence that circumcision may save your life if you have sex with an HIV-positive person. I think the figure I heard was that you'd have 60% better chances if circumcised, due to a lower white blood cell count at the tip of your penis (white blood cells which are directly infected by HIV). Someone will correct me, I'm sure. Did ancient people have *anecdotal* evidence that suggested circumcision would prevent certain diseases? I don't know, but for such a large percentage, it seems plausible. They didn't have microscopes, but they weren't blind or stupid. They were simply misidentifying the causes of some very real observations.

Apart from health, sociology was a big target (in fact, the stated target) of religious law. How do people treat each other? What rules define the interactions of people in a society? How do we attempt to avoid a "welfare class", "bankruptcy", a certain few owning most of the property, etc? (For just one example, think "Year of Jubilee" and imagine its economic impact).

All I'm saying is that many of the religious laws were anything but. They were laws that were a response to issues of the day. Just like today, there were lots of pointless and stupid ones -- some probably downright harmful. How do you get people to obey the laws? Threaten death, jail, etc? Sure, and they did. What's a more pleasant way to do it? Tell them their god said so. That way you don't look like the bad guy for creating rules, and, what's more, people don't think they can get away with unseen crime when an omniscient god is the judge, jury, and executioner.

So this is where people argue that "that was then, and this is now". Wrong. Human nature doesn't really change much over time. People are still basically greedy, hateful, lustful, kind, loving, and generous. They always have been, and always will be. The essence of religious law is the most time-tested way of dealing with the way we've been since we've been human. Do situations change? Would Moses have envisioned the internet and motor vehicles? No, of couse not. But he would have known what people would act like on the internet, and how they would drive. See? The *things* don't change the *people*. They just change the *object* of the desire, or the *cause* of the murdurous rage.

Insisting on monotheism was, in a way, insisting that people follow a uniform code of conduct. They didn't want their carefully constructed legal system to be polluted by outside influences, which would generally prove destructive to Jewish society.

On a more theological note, you quote the "you shall have no other gods". The actual passage is "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me." (Ten Commandments)

Jewish tradition never said that there were no other "godlike" entities in the spiritual world. They just said that you shouldn't worship them in a higher precedence than the I AM. In fact, the Bible is chock full of stories about angels, demons, spirits, and precognition,

No evolution here

[ubergeek65536]

It's understandable why many Americans don't believe in evolution -- It's because evolution only happens outside of the US.

Re:They were Fake Apemen. OK

[Literaphile]

What's it like being ignorant? That's a very nice straw man argument you've constructed: pick a few bad examples of failed human specimens, and then represent them as being all the evidence we have for human evolution. Maybe you shouldn't bring a knife to a gun fight.

This Wikipedia page has links to dozens of specimens of various stages of human evolution. Some even with pictures! I know, I know, you might actually learn something that contradicts your small-mindedness, but it might be worth it.

This page on the Smithsonian Museum's website (I know, I know, it's a 'devil's facility', but bear with me) also has a lot of stuff on evolution, including specimens. But, again, you might actually learn something, and then your straw man would fall apart.

Follow these links with caution, Christian warrior!

God's evaluation from HR

[alienmole]

According to a leaked memo from the HR department, during his annual evaluation God was found to be a huge control freak, who doesn't work well in teams, doesn't always communicate clearly, can be a bit too harsh when meting out punishment, and perhaps worst of all, has a serious God complex. They had to let him go.