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Putting Anti-Evolution Candidates On the Spot
hmccabe writes "YouTube is currently taking submissions for their next debate, in which the Republican candidates will answer questions. This seems like a good opportunity to challenge those candidates who say they do not believe in evolution. But since I am not an expert in the subject, I would be interested in how you all feel the question should be presented. For my own part, I think it is important to present the overwhelming body of evidence on the subject as incontrovertible fact, much the same way DNA evidence is presented during a criminal trial, and ask why the candidate feels they can pick and choose what facts they believe in. Moreover, I am wary of coming across like Christopher Hitchins, so vitriolic the candidate will defend themselves rather than answer the question. Perhaps the most important aspect of posing the question is to inform the viewers who watch the debate that this is really not a matter of opinion, but of science. So my question is: 'Hey geneticists, have you considered addressing evolution in the YouTube debates? Can you do it in 30 seconds?'"
Tancredo, Brownback, and Huckabee.
(Grammar Nazi side-note: no apostrophe needed for the plural candidates).
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
GUILTY: standard error of assuming that a scientific theory is a speculation, conjecture or guess.
A scientific theory is a logically consistent framework for testable hypotheses. Evolutionary theory is a FACT, just like gravitational theory is a FACT, just like germ theory of disease is a FACT.
A-Bomb
Umm, you are showing your own lack of knowledge by assuming a theory is not fact. You are using the common tv version of the term, as in "I have a theory..." this is incorrect. A theory is only a step behind a scientific law. It is supported by experiment, factual data and has not been disproven by experiment or factual data.
From wikipedia: "In science, a theory is a mathematical or logical explanation, or a testable 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 theories commonly used to describe and explain this behaviour are Newton's theory of universal gravitation (see also gravitation), and general relativity."
Creationism is NOT a theory. If isn't even a conjecture or hypothesis. It is nonsense. There is no data whatsoever to back it up. There is no experiment that can show it to be true. There is nothing.
Evolution is a fact. It can be tested in a laboratory. Unless you don't believe in things like tuberculosis, drug resistant tuberculosis actually. We can evolve bacteria easily. There is solid evidence in the fossil record, in the linkage between DNA sets, in fucking DOG BREEDS.
It is not open for debate, it is not one of several competing theories, it is the ONLY theory there is for the existence of life and how it got to where we are today. There are no other theories. I am using the PROPER usage of the term here. Why this is something people have to argue about is beyond me. Why don't we argue about the existence of the moon while we're at it. It is just as stupid an argument.
note: Theory vs law. Laws are more terse and theories never graduate to laws. Laws are simple observed tautologies while theories are often more complex constructed models.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
First, let me thank you for posing a good question in an intelligent way. It's why I posed this question to /. instead of someplace else.
Honestly, it's mostly the latter, but not because they're GOP candidates. Rather I feel the overwhelming problem in politics on both sides is a refusal to look at facts. After 6+ years of the Bush administration, there has been almost constant controversy regarding the administration's refusal to admit things that are painfully obvious to a critical observer. (e.g., Saddam's involvement in 9/11, the WMD justification, etc.) We would not tolerate this of judges or police, but politicians are given a pass. If this is a chance to make someone defend what I feel is an indefensible position, I feel it is important to take it.
As another poster already said, it's a question of character. When a candidate goes on record saying something like this, it's because they are either pandering for votes, or because they truly deny the mountain of physical evidence that shows how evolution works. I feel that in either case, it shows someone who is unfit to lead this nation.
As an aside, my personal favorite example of someone who dealt with science in politics correctly was a Republican: Eisenhower. He responded to the Soviets in the space race by increasing the funding for science education, showing the USSR that we were up to the challenge to being more brilliant than them. I would modern presidential hopefuls would demonstrate the same kind of character.
"Oh well of course micro-evolution exists, silly goose! Whoever would have thought we suggested otherwise? It's that big scary macro-evolution which there is no evidence for!"
The problem with all the pithy short jibes is that the anti-evolutionists are just as capable of batting one back, which gives the impression of some sort of tie to the uninitiated viewer.
A little trick programmers use all the time.. Code Reuse.
Evolution makes more sense than simply making shit up, writing it down, and calling it gospel.
It is theoretically possible for a pattern that appears to be ordered to arise from a "random" process, therefore is not possible to prove any process is not random.
A - It is possible to get a seemingly ordered pattern out of random noise
B- Not possible to prove anything is random
A does not imply B.
What is your argument? Big words and confused structure, do not a valid argument make. If you mean we cannot be sure anything is random we have a whole branch of mathematics that can tell us how random something is. However you place much too much emphasis on random within the framework of the theory. A random mutation means only that the exact sequence that was changed is not always the same. Some sequence are more prone to change then others because of the structure of DNA, heavily coiled parts do not mutate or express as much as exposed parts. Mutations aren't' random in that sense. Mutations occur at various spots due to any number of a million things and some causes cause certain mutations much more often then others. Each instance of mutation has 1 or more causes, to 1 or more units of the genome. These have wildly varied effects on the expressed phenotype.
For quantum mechanics you can falsify randomness there. If you can find any way to predetermine the certain "random" events then the events aren't' random. thus it's falsifiable. How can you falsify god? You can't design any experiment to have it fail if god does not exist. Unless you narrow down what god is. For instance if I define god to be a 90ft tall human with a red beard and a stubborn case of hemorrhoids an experiment to falsify this is to survey all human beings for one that matches. If I cannot then there exists no god. But a omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent who can't be measured is definitely not falsifiable and any theries related to such a being is obviously similarly unscientific and unfalsifiable.
Where on earth did you get the idea that any parts of quantum theory or any parts of evolution are no predictive and falsifiable?
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
With ID, there hasn't presently been even the suggestion of how could theoretically verify that an uncanny being could interfere and intelligently design the very canny beings that are people or even animals. And that is the issue, it was a very poorly camouflaged effort to get the very unscientific concept of creationism into science classrooms.
As for your assertion of what science can and cannot handle. If it doesn't leave a trace or touch the observable universe, so that an experiment can be set up to independently verify it, science is under no obligation to handle it. And that is by design. Allowing for things which don't interact with the known universe and which cannot be made to do so in a systematic manner is really not going to ever get people anywhere useful.
In science, you either are right or wrong, and the answer does not come by appealing to consensus, it comes by doing experiments. Newton didn't need to "debate" gravity with anyone. People who disagreed where free to do so, but also had to face that if they didn't use his theories they didn't have his ability to accurately predict the speed and position of e.g. balls moving on an incline.
I believe you are confusing science with politics. In politics, we debate, because often there is no alternative that is more "right" than the others. Working societies exist both with and without e.g. high levels of government spending. The important thing is not so much to determine truth, as it is to establish a solution that the majority can agree upon.
No, it means you are not someone who seeks truth-by-consensus. Which, in my book, is a badge of honor.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
No. It isn't. And if you think that passage somehow definitively states that the Earth is a sphere, you are either crazy or an idiot. There are other passages of the OT you can selectively quote to support the Earth being flat.
Also, that phrase in Hebrew is literally translated to "the circle of the Earth" not "the sphere of the Earth" which, especially when taken in context, makes it highly unlikely that the passage is making a claim about the physical shape of the Earth. Even for literalists, that's a stretch.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
correction: 'something scientific' must read 'something UNscientific'.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Intelligent Design isn't a (scientific) theory or even a hypothesis, but pure speculation. In order to qualify as a hypothesis, it would need to make at least one testable prediction; in order to qualify as a theory, that prediction would need to be tested and the result be found conforming with reality.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Minor point: - George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, 28th January 2003.
That's more than an implication. That's as close as you get to saying "He did it!" without having to show evidence.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
A few more links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee_genome_pro ject
http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm
Thanks mate, that's really cool.
bundaegi is good for you
When they say species "jump", they obviously don't mean "in one generation". (I can only blame the media that you got this impression.) They're basically saying the change happens in fits and starts, rather than at a constant rate. But those fits are still very large numbers of generations.
Life coming from a comet is not an alternative to evolution, it's an alternative to many theories of abiogenesis.
As for probability - flip a coin 80 times, and if it spells "BillyBlaze" in ASCII, let me know. If you do, I will admonish that there's only about a 1 in 1200000000000000000000000 chance that it actually happened. Doesn't make it false, though. Read up on the anthropic principle.
Some of the Bush apologists are insisting that Bush is, in fact, brilliant. He was just misled by ignorant and corrupt advisers.
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Bzzzzt. http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html
You must be joking!
* Earliest dating of all written gospels are an entire generation apart from Jesus crucification. Mark: 70 AD, Matthew: 70-100 AD, Luke: 80-100, John: 90-110. That fact alone calls the reliability of the gospels into doubt, because 50 years is a lot of time for eye-witnesses to misremember things.
* What we know today as the four gospels was actually compiled in 325 AD by Constantine. They were at least 2 different versions of Luke floating around by the time it was written (google Marcion of Sinope).
* Paul who is responsible for most of the stuff that's in the New Testament never met Jesus in life. He bases his claims of authority on a vision of Jesus. So everything he claims specifically is secondary.
* Although John is the only gospel that talks about Jesus in an eye-witness fassion, both the text itself and historical attribution is unclear on that issue. Whether John is truly primary is questionable, at best.
* Then there are "secret gospels" (Mark, James, Thomas) that, although not part of the New Testament canon, need to be considered as sources if one seriously wants to study the "gospels". Some of them were to be included in early attempts to create a New Testament (Marcion again).
* Finally, Mark, Luke and Matthew are so similar to each other that it's clear that some (if not all) are copying. From each other and/or other sources. This trashes their reliability totally. Especially about anything miraculous, because these things miraculisly don't happen anymore, now do they?
* Also, Luke was from Antioch (modern southern Turkey). Jesus never came further north then Galilae. It is questionable whether Luke ever met Jesus.
But thank you for your discussion on primary and secondary sources. Being a history buff, it's always nice to meet people who can appreciate that distinction. You should really apply that kind of critical thinking to what your church is telling you.
Free Manning, jail Obama.