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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?'"
discuss.
There's a lot of stuff on there that makes me question whether or not people are evolving.
Which candidate's are Anti-Evolution exactly?
What's the point of bringing it up in an election debate? Aside from educational funding, stance on evolution really isn't even on my radar for politicians.
If I was going to ask a question, I'd ask "How will you calm the media down from distracting issues like evolution and focus on real issues for which governmental action is appropriate?"
Now that is a question I want to hear politicians answer!
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Do you really care what the answer is or do you just want to know how best to ask a question to make the GOP candidates look bad? From the summary it sounds like the latter. Just curious ...
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
It seems to me that a great many American's don't believe that evolution occurred. Confronting a candidate on this issue is more likely to boost support among these people than it is to erode support among people who already know that the target candidate is a throw-back to the 14th century. This might do more to energize the religious right if they get a bee in the bonnet over a perceived attack on their beliefs.
The pro-evolution camp might win the debate, by lose the election.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I honestly don't give two craps whether a person believes or doesn't believe that evolution is concrete fact. What matters to me is whether the belief or lack of belief results in a regressive, narrow minded, receptiveness to scientific research and inquiry.
Candidates which don't "believe in evolution" may be in the habit to reject other scientific evidence which conflicts with whatever goes on in their minds.
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I think it's actually a very bad idea to get into sound-byte debates with creationists, because that is exactly the kind of debate they want. You can't explain the science in 30 seconds, but they can certainly rattle off all their "evidence" in that amount of time. You also run the risk of legitimizing them by getting into a debate in the first place. You don't see geologists getting into debates with crazy people on the street who say the Earth is flat, because it's not something that sane people debate. This is a problem that needs to be attacked at the root (in schools while children are young) and in long-format discussions.
People in bamboo houses shouldn't throw pandas...Jesus said that! -Ninja
Romney- You once said you want to "double Guantanamo." Why do you condone, rather, endorse one of the darkest spots on America's record? Should we continue to deny them rights in the Geneva Convetnion?
Giuliani- Are you running as anything but the 9/11 candidate?
McCain- You've supported continuing the Iraq war voceriferously, when do we call it quits? After 1,000 troops are dead? 10,000? You joked about invading Iran, would you consider it?
Paul- You oppose abortion. Would you enact legislation to counteract (or severely restrict) Roe v. Wade?
There's a bunch more candidates, but why pick evolution? It is a fairly unimportant topic (considering the others at hand) and it is unlikely that a President will seriously impact what is taught in the tens of thousands of school districts across the nation (who pick their own cirriculum generally).
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
If you're going to try and correct people, get your own terminology correct before doing so.
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
Because (believe it or not) there are people who don't know the difference between "the universe", "the Galaxy", and "the Solar System", and there are fundies that actively exploit that ignorance.
It's easy to screen out the radical fundamentalists. They answer "6000 years" and are at least honest about their base.
But the dangerous ones are the ones who "teach the controversy", because "Them crazy scientists can't seem to agree on anything! Some of 'em say everything's 14 billion years old, and some of 'em the world's just 4.6! They can't both be right!"
Vote only for a politician who is smarter than a fifth-grader; that is, one who knows that "The Universe", is approximately 14 billion years old (I'll take any number between 10B and 15B) is much bigger and older than "The Solar System", which is 4.6 billion years old (hell, I'll take anything between 5 and 4.5).
Uh, what?
Care to explain, exactly, how ID is a scientific theory? Nobody disputes that Evolution is a theory based on observable facts.
ID is a religious study or philosophy subject, but certainly not science.
Mr. Candidate, sir, given the overwhelming body of evidence from hundreds of different scientific fields ranging from archeology to physics to zoology, can you explain to us how you can seriously believe that the world was created 2,000 years after the Babylonians invented beer?
A-Bomb
Stop diverting attention on topics that are really trite and have little bearing to reality. So what, they don't believe in evolution. They're dumb, and I can accept that there are a lot of dumb people in this world. I really don't hold politicians to be the most intelligent people in this world anyway.
But really, does it really matter? Do you really expect them to push their agenda? That's like thinking a gay person automatically has an agenda of pushing gay issues, even when maybe they don't. Maybe they happen to be gay, but they wanted to be treated like a regular politican, just like everyone else, without the gay stigma. Just because someone believes something doesn't mean they will use their opportunity to push their agenda all the time.
Yes, Slashdot has publicized some instances where anti-evolution agenda was pushed, but really how many was that like, maybe 3 or 4 cases across the entire US? Come on, it's like accusing all of India of being guilty of "honor killings" when really it's only done in the most rural, primitive parts of India. In the same vein, yes, some politicians probably don't believe in evolution, but do you really think they care enough to push their agenda across all the school boards? My bet is that probably only an infinitesimal percentage would.
And plus, how much really is someone who doesn't believe in evolution more guilty that someone who is religious? Can you really stand their and feel contempt for someone who doesn't believe in evolution, yet thinks its okay if they are religious? It's probably equally as unscientific.
The real crime is focussing the talk about politics onto stupid, stupid issues like evolution, or flag burning. HOW ABOUT TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING CONCRETE? What about federal regulation into hedge funds?? What about making sure we have enough social security? What about things that actually AFFECT our lives?
You could ask the candidate:
What model of Dinosaur did your ancestors prefer driving?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
The "Intelligent Design" people attempt to confuse the issue of whether something happened randomly or whether it happened because someone "designed" it to happen.
If you throw the dice and get a 7, was it because of luck or because the dice were weighted?
You cannot tell after the fact if you cannot examine the dice. And that's what they focus on. They accept everything that can be demonstrated, but they refuse to believe that it was random.
So don't argue that. Focus on whether it is "Science" or not.
Who cares what they want to believe in their churches? This is about what gets taught in the science classes of our country.
If it cannot be falsified it is not Science and does NOT belong in a science class. At all. Not even to "teach the controversy". Period. End of statement.
Now, do they accept that "Intelligent Design" does not belong in science class? Yes/No?
If "Yes", how would they falsify it do demonstrate that it IS scientific?
- If you say "How do you reconcile with your belief that the earth is only 6,000 years old?" they may say that they are not scientists so they're not qualified to comment on such a detailed question, or they may say that it could be more than 6,000 but God certainly created it, or they may just say "maybe the scientists are wrong about that".
- If you say "How can you seriously claim the earth is only 6,000 years old when every real scientist disagrees with you?" they will say that not all scientists agree with evolution, and often today's heresy turns into tomorrow's orthodoxy.
Either way they will then add that science works by the free and open exchange of ideas, and so they support the right of both sides in the debate to put forwards their views. They may also add something about the bible being right about so many other things, it seems odd that it should be wrong just about this.These debates may have been the place where ideas were put forwards once, but these days they are more like a boxing match in which each candidate tries to land knockout punches on the others, and a panel of pundits awards them points for style. Fact and logic don't stand a chance.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
It means you do believe in it about as much as most other scientifically-minded persons do. You believe that it's "just a theory", but you probably know that it currently has a well-deserved position as a mainstream theory(the mainstream theory, one might say). You happen to know what "theory" means, but from the tone of your post, it seems you also know why there's no need to put that word on alarmist stickers on biology books.
Why is the government on the *federal* level funding science? At most you could argue that it could find science that is directly impacts military standards and equipment for the Navy.
Primate Testing in the United States involved the "use" of 60,000 animals in 2004. Such testing is used to help ensure the safety of new drugs and vaccines. If you don't believe evolution is scientifically valid, how can one justify this? Why wouldn't we use flatworms? The FDA, in fact, requires primate testing for many new medical treatments. Should the FDA remove this requirement?
Seriously, this matters much, much more than what teenagers do or don't learn in hi skool biology class. If the Creationist and ID people are right, then we can save quite a bit of money and quite possibly quite a few human lives by forgoing such testing. Plus thousands of furry animals.
I would argue that you are incorrect. Intelligent design is not a scientific theory or fact.
Evolution is scientific fact. Here, a theory is scientific fact. I believe what you are thinking of is the term "hypothesis." Evolution is not a hypothesis anymore.
Our body's blue print is DNA. This blueprint is copied from generation to generation. This results in errors which can either assist us or degrade us depending on the environment we have chosen to live in.
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he believes in a bible that was read out of a hat. nothing more to say.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
- Global warming vs climate change
- The adequacy of our current lines of embryonic stem cells
- The effectiveness (or lack thereof) of abstinence only sex education
- Mercury emissions
- Baby Einstein
- Reproductive health issues
- the list goes on but these are off the top of my head...
My point is that Bush has a clear history of distorting science (the theory of evolution included) to fit his ideological views. That is the real problem.Have you ever gotten a flu shot?
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
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."
I remember hearing someone once say that if you think the earth is round because the soles of your feet are arched, and God would not give you arched feet to walk upon a flat earth, then you don't really know that the earth is round. I suspect that most people just don't know enough and/or aren't good enough at thinking to really evaluate the evidence, and that most people who accept evolution do not understand it based on an evaluation of the facts, but believe it because their parents or teachers told them that it was true.
The evidence spans multiple disciplines, evaluating it requires critical thinking skills, and I just don't think that it is possible to present the evidence in a compelling manner in 30 seconds. I think it requires hours to do so, and an audience that is willing and able to think about the evidence presented.
Of course, I would love to be proven wrong.
For an example inspired by another recent
Basically, we know these theories are flawed, but they still explain many things within certain limits and are consistantly reliable within those limits.
That does NOT mean the true and complete explanation of the fundamental forces of nature (what general relativity and quantum mechanics deal with) is in fact anything like quantum mechanics and general relativity.
When a theory crosses into fact territory is when that theory can be proven to be correct. When this happens, a theory becomes what we call a Law of Nature. The fact is there are still quite a few problems with Evolution which it has never adequately explained.
Throw in the fact that the Theory Evolution itself has never been shown to be observeable, measureable, or repeatable, and you have to question whether or not it should be called "science", in the strictest sense, at all.
Since, I've got to either believe some hokey theory that says I came from bacteria, or a fish, or whatever it is these days, or I can believe in some super ultra mega dude who built it all, I think the second option sounds cooler and that's what I pick.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Sure it can be.
If a dog ever conceives a cat, then evolution has been falsified. It's as easy as that.
He's exactly right. For all we know, "Intelligent Design" could be "correct," in the same way any particular religion could be "correct." But because it explicitly concerns itself with "proving a negative" (i.e., that evolution couldn't have happened randomly and thus required a "designer"), it cannot be evaluated scientifically. Because of that, it is not science, in the same way that poetry or religion or literature are not science. Maybe it deserves a place in school and maybe it doesn't, but if it does then it belongs next to discussions of Greek mythology or something, not in biology class!
ID cannot be falsified using the Scientific Method. Therefore, regardless of it's "truthfulness," it doesn't belong in science class. Period!
And, of course, all the above is giving the ID proponents a huge benefit of the doubt. In reality, ID is nothing more than a scheme by which theocrats attempt to subvert our secular educational system. But it's not likely advisable to point that out to them in a debate; instead, the best strategy is to just keep driving home the point that "science" depends on the Scientific Method, and "Intelligent Design" doesn't fit within that framework of thought.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
"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.
Disclaimer: I'm a molecular biologist who studies bacterial evolution at a molecular level.
Disclaimer 2: I'm a lifelong democrat and don't care what the Republicans say at this point.
There are simply so many more important things that we could challenge the republicans on: Why are you all so fucking incompetent? Why are you even more crooked than the Democrats? Have you no shame? I could go on.
Funding for the sciences is something of an important question - and I'll acknowledge a link between acceptance of objective reality and support for scientific funding. But as a scientist I will happily say that federal support for my work is far lower on the list of priorities than clean and transparent government, sound economic and social policies, better/cleaner funding for general education, and a foreign policy based on something other than bellicosity and greed. If someone wants to challenge the republicans on their failure to deliver any of those things, I might listen.
But even so, these debates are sheer pablum - I'm sure all the Repubs favor clean government which is why they want no limitations on lobbyists. The odds of getting any of these people to seriously engage on real questions approach nil.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Someday, I'd like to live in a society that values evidence more than faith and thinking more than hope. From what I know of the world, things have been oscillating between these two styles of framing the world for a while now. The only way to get it to shift towards my end is to put my ideas out there and directly contrast them with the alternative. The more national the audience the better. In all likelihood there is a twelve year old somewhere, who's gonna watch the debate with fundamentally religious parents, and who might be attracted to a different (more rational) way to see things.
I think that you are correct insofar as your criticisms of creationism/intelligent design are concerned; however, fact is something objective, in an epistimological sense. I think even science forgets about its own philosophy. My main problem with saying that evolution is a scientific fact/law is that it is so often construed to imply an objective fact, which is not provable in the least sense. Microevolution is absolutely fact, but never, ever confuse it with macroevolution, which is what laymen usually mean by "evolution." Macroevolution, as far as I know, has not yielded scientific proof, nor does it make any testable claims. There is no control, so I fail to see where the the science is. What people might confuse with the field of evolution (in the popular sense) is likely genetics. Science lives and breathes on healthy debate, even of such things as gravitation (a continuing problem).
I'm not trolling here, but I have to ask if maybe hmccabe is. For example, here are some of the issues that are important to me in the presidential election: the budget (getting it under control), the war (getting the Iraqis government/military to the point where it is largely self-sufficient as quickly as possible, including securing their borders and getting the insurgency under control), getting our own borders under control and doing something about the illegal alien problem, and being prepared to intervene (if necessary) if the housing credit crunch turns into a repeat of the S&L meltdown of the 1980s (gee, doesn't the banking business have a short memory?), patent reform, maybe even copyright reform, the e-voting problem, etc. In other words, issues that really matter.
An issue that is not of much importance to me in the election is whether a given candidate believes that the Genesis account is literal and meant to be taken literally, or if (?:s)?he believes that the Genesis account was God's way of getting across to people with little understanding of His creation, what it was that He did and how He did it, like "Let there be light" (Big Bang), wait a few billion years, form the earth, separate the land from the water, bring forth life, evolve it into people (making man from the dust of the earth), etc. Or, a candidate could even be (?:s)?he an atheist and think it was all just an accident for which science has yet to fully account but will in time completely explain. None of those viewpoints is terribly relevant to handling the important issues named in my first paragraph.
It may be because I have paid attention only to substantive issues such as those outlined in my first paragraph, but I actually don't know if any of the candidates are creationists, nor does the blurb name any names, so I am left wondering at this point if the whole thing is just an anti-Republican (I notice no other party was mentioned) troll. If there actually are creationist candidates, would someone be so kind as to post names, along with links containing supporting evidence (preferably the candidate's own words, and if possible, on the candidate's own website)? To reiterate, I don't believe whether a candidate is a creationist or not is important to the real issues, and in fact, trying to make that an issue is probably just someone's attempt at erecting a straw man to deflect attention from the real issues.
...what their opinions are on: the atomic theory of matter, special relativity, evolution, and the round-earth theory.
What if DNA is sort of like... God's programming language (or whatever Higher Power "created" the world). Run with the idea for a minute, when you start a new project, how much of your code do you re-use? (or, a better question, how much would you re-use if you could re-use as much as possible)? The answer would probably not be 100%, otherwise all you would have is an identical program to the original, or an extension to the original. But it would hopefully be a significantly high number, at least on similar projects.
just an interesting thought...
Without a way of testing for the existence of the supernatural force, it shouldn't even be given the status of hypothesis.
Because they do a damn good job of it, that's why.
The NSF and NIH are far from perfect, and as taxpayers (I'm a scientist, as well) we are entitled to many critical improvements in transparency, but they are vastly more efficient than equivalent systems in Europe (I don't know so much about asia) which are riddled with hidebound cronyism, or than private systems in the US which are extremely wasteful and seldom private anyway (see next paragraph). I really shouldn't need to defend DARPA on slashdot - maybe computers are not your thing though.
Anyhoo, the reason we have computers, container shipping, automation, tele-operation, intelligent drug design and genetic engineering is because the US Federal government payed the R&D costs. Sometimes they provided outright subsidies, but they also provided an initial customer base without which many of these technologies couldn't have been developed to the point that became viable as consumer-oriented enterprises. Personally, I think that the general public is entitled to some of that money back, once technologies developed at public expense become profitable, but this is penny-pinching on my part: the return on the investment in computer technology, for example, has been absolutely fabulous.
Now, a lot of this was done through the military system - but what the military *buys* seldom really has much to do with what the military really needs. DARPA, in particular, is in the business of providing a military cover for technology that is in fact being developed for the supposedly-ancillary civilian purposes. They also do research which really does have a military motivation: it's about 50:50.
If you're some kind of fanatic who believes in the infinite grace of market forces:
1) You are about as connected to reality as a creationist.
and
2) You are proposing that we scrap the most powerful engine of technological and economic growth in human history because it doesn't groove with your ideological fantasy worldview. If you have a big bushy mustache, that's *two* things you have in common with Stalin.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
It's a lot broader than that. If you have a lab that's partially funded by the federal government (obviously that includes all labs at all public universities) then you are not allowed to do any stem cell research there even if the funding for the lab time and materials does not come from the federal government. That's because they would be using some lab tools that were purchased for other purposes with federal funding.
In order to do stem cell research, the researchers can't be paid in any way by the federal government. The lab they use cannot have any equipment in it that was paid for by the federal government. The rent for the building cannot have been paid for by the federal government. A lab either needs to give up all federal money or it needs to set up an entirely separate lab with all new equipment.
If you have a lab with $100,000 of private equipment in it and you want to buy a single microscope with federal funds then that lab cannot be used to research stem cells.
That puts a severe crimp on stem cell research which goes far beyond it being a mere question of funding the research.
Cow Cube
Creation is recorded (supposedly revealed to man by God).
Evolution of mankind is inferred from evidence that we have uncovered.
The former is scientifically unfalsifiable and cannot be logically refuted by any means except to just dismiss it. There is no point in trying to put anti-creationists "on the spot" because their viewpoint isn't amenable to scientific scrutiny in the first place, and of course any viewpoint that cannot be scientifically scrutinized must invariably be mistaken, right?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Wrong. Intelligent design is a thesis, a philosophical position. It's not testable. Hypotheses have to be testable. Intelligent design, or a teleological argument as it is more properly called, basically says that because of the complexity of objects in the world, such objects could only come about as the result of creation rather than natural processes.
IAALS.
Who cares?! They're politicians, not scientists.
But it does matter. Will this candidate ignore the overwhelming body of scientific evidence that says something is happening, and act against the data on their own belief, or political motivation, possibly even trying to stifle the scientific community and discredit their findings at every turn like our current administration has done on numerous occasions. You see, this does matter, when the President doesn't know well enough that he doesn't know enough about an issue and still doesn't take the advise of the people who DO know about the issue. It would be like the PR department of a car company overruling the engineering department and saying that the car doesn't need seat belts because they are uncomfortable to wear (while actually not wanting them to have seat belts because he can save his friends an extra million dollars a year on production costs as well as make his other friends in the medical business more money from treating more serious injuries with the added bonus making new friends of the undertakers and morgues more business from the increased amount of fatalities in auto accidents...). You starting to see my point?
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
By "Evolution," I was referring to the theory that humans evolved from lower lifeforms. Genetic mutation and evolution is undeniable; it can be witnessed in colonies of bacteria, etc. The disputed part of evolution is whether or not humans originated as a result of it. If we were to find a human with the exact bone structure as a modern human but dated back, say, 100,000 years, then we would need to significantly change our theory of evolution. Thus, because evidence (although I doubt such evidence exists) can change the theory of evolution, it is falsifiable.
ID, on the other hand, will simply pass off any evidence as "part of God's plan" and not change its "theory" to accommodate -- making it unfalsifiable.
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
You're not really. A theory is a theory, not a fact. As you say, the theory of evolution has been tested as well as we're capable of testing it and has come through nicely. Other theories, like gravity, relativity or the standard model have been tested (and confirmed) to excruciating precision. That DOESN'T make them facts though. The theory of evolution itself is under very active development.
It's a very non-scientific thing to do to take your explanation for something, no matter how likely it is that that explanation is correct, and call it a fact. That's what pseudo-science and religion do.
Also, theories do not mature into "scientific laws." "Scientific law" is a kind of careless term for certain famous mathematical relationships that are parts of various theories. After all, Newton's "laws" of motion aren't really correct -- they're very good approximations in most circumstances we're familiar with, but they have been superseded by relativity.
Accordingly, evolution (as it stands today) has considerable merit and quite a bit of explanatory power. Intelligent design has no substance to even consider for this question. As a result, the famous words of physicist Wolfgang Pauli (uttered for other crackpot fantasies of his time) are most appropriate when judging ID or Creationism - "it is not even wrong".
To address the subject of this thread - "Do you believe in evolution" is hardly a useful question to ask anyone because both affirmative and negative answers signify ignorance of subtly different kinds. The answer that science would put forth is that a scientific theory does not require your belief for it to be correct. Bernoulli's principle works every time an airplane flies. You do not need to believe in it for it to work. THAT is the reason why science has come to dominate the way we think today - it works.
This semantic trap is also the reason why scientific issues cannot be constructively debated in a public forum. It is not simply a lack of detailed knowledge on the part of the public at large that messes things up. On the contrary, a well-informed public can be quite knowledgeable about certain things. The idea of using tools that WORK is something the layperson tends to forget and instead ends up espousing his/her pet cause, regardless of the details. Thus we have a rabid eco-terrorist movement, stemming from an activism based largely on ignorance. Further, we have the abortion debate, where the arguments have left the realms of legitimate scientific inquiry and degenerated into opinion polls.
Science philosophers, in my opinion, are responsible by way of shirking their duty of informing the public about the paradigms of evolving theories and definitions of truth insofar as it pertains to natural law.
I believe in evolution for lack of an alternative that doesn't involve schizophrenia. I even find the idea of intelligent design by aliens more plausible than a compilation of stories that people were commanded to write by an imaginary friend. I can see the -1 troll points just rolling in...
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
It is good to note that even if we could create our own pocket universes which were left to chance but measured for complexity after that fact that we could not prove that intelligent design is necessary. If complex life proved extremely statistically unlikely to arise on its own, that would only prove we were an anomaly and not the nature of the anomaly. Even if we created life intelligently, that would only prove it's possible, and not that we arrived via the same route.
;-) . You don't have to believe in it. You don't have to believe it was unguided if you do believe in it. You do have to learn it and you do have to learn to apply it and reason about it. No matter what you believe, science is based on evidence, and despite the beliefs, hopes, and dreams of many people, evolutionary theory is a good model for understanding things. Even though Newtonian physics have been overtaken by Einstein, and Einstein's physics might be overtaken by QM or string theory, Newtonian physics is still a good framework for lots of things. That's why people need to learn about evolution: for all the doubts one might personally have about it, there's lots of evidence for it and it explains lots of things. Those students who don't want to believe in evolution emotionally are free to feel that way, but intellectually the class will act based on evidence and not emotion. The test is the same no matter how you feel about it.
We likewise cannot disprove that we were created by an intelligent creator. Even if we found it was easy in our pocket universes for complex life to thrive, that would not be proof that our specific origins were not special.
We could only offer absence of proof, and never proof of absence. This puts the definition of "fact" quite contrary to anything to do with intelligent design, unless we all one day in some afterlife meet the creator and are shown how we were created. We can neither prove nor disprove intelligent design, so it is outside the scope of science.
I rather like what my high-school biology teacher said about evolution. This is not verbatim by any means, as it was erm... a while ago that I was in high school
In case anyone's wondering, the teacher was Southern Baptist and didn't believe in evolution as truth about the past at all. She did, however, believe what she said about it being necessary to understand it because scientific progress was being made based on it. I never asked whether she thought intelligent design should be taught in public schools, but another student tells me her opinion is that it should be mentioned in passing that some people believe in it if a student asks, and the class should get right back to evolution.
Um, no. There are various theories and hypothesises as to how evolution works. All of which may be true, by the way. But evolution, unto itself, is a fact. It has been observed.
And, no, YEC have no theories in the scientific sense, only in the parlor talk sense. That was the GP(Ps?) point.
Your point about abiogenisis shows that you do not even understand what evolution is. It is the variance of life, not the origins.
The earth orbits around the sun. That is not open for debate and yet has plenty of science involved. Don't be an idiot.
Let me first say: I believe in evolution. Now, onto my rant.
This entire discussion is just one big excuse for the evolutionists to trumpet their horn, degrade those who don't have the same beliefs, and make themselves feel better, all in one. Frankly, I'm sick of it. Just because people don't agree with you does NOT mean they're stupid - and I don't care WHAT kind of comparisons you can come up with to justify your point. Degrading others is never alright. A favorite topic of people today is tolerance, but it's funny how it gets applied to everyone except when it's convenient to not apply it to creationists. It's also amazing how most people here seem to think that believing in some sort of higher power makes you a crazy person. Some of America's most brilliant leaders believed in a higher power (the Christian God, most of them) and they were able to make excellent, well informed, and well-regarded decisions during their presidencies. So now, just because we have had a president for the last 7 years that most no one likes, and he happens to believe in God, it suddenly means that believing in God equals stupidity? Where's the logic in that? I'm sorry to inform you of this, but believing that there is *something* after this life does not automatically make you a nut, or incompetent for that matter.
If we, as evolutionists want people to take us seriously (e.g. those people who don't understand the overwhelming facts), then we have to first treat them with respect. They won't listen to us if we don't take this simply courtesy. To me, evolution is a fact. But another and more important fact, IMO, is that if you can't bother to treat our fellow man with respect, then you're not any better than racists, bigots, terrorists, and any other group that has no respect for others. Period.
If the average Slashdot reader had infinite power it would be all booze and hookers, right?
Yes, God may be a slob just like the rest of us (thanks St. Alanis), but thank God, He deigned to create us. Without that where would we be?
Q.E.D.
Sniff - why do I smell ozone? Did I just hear thunder?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
STACK OVERFLOW
++NO CARRIER
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Interesting...
Testing comes after the Hypothesis, not before. A hypothesis is valid, even without a test to prove it. A hypothesis is a statement that fits the observations. It is science's responsibility to try and come up with a valid test.
Secondly, science needs to be large enough to handle any concept that might be true. This includes things like living in "The Matrix", or being in a glass ball (called a universe) on someone's (God's) desk. Science is strong enough to show these things.
If you discount a hypothesis because you haven't figured out how to test it yet, then you are the one being closed minded.
If it's not testable, it's just a conjecture. If you want to argue that just because no one hasn't found a test yet that doesn't mean it's not testable, then I'll be forced to argue that you might not even exist. I'd rather not go there. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Wrong. Intelligent design is a thesis, a philosophical position. It's not testable.
Which is exactly why that nonsense has no place in a science classroom.
Trolling is a art,
I think you mean...
+++ OUT OF CHEESE ERROR +++
+++ PLEASE REINSTALL UNIVERSE +++
+++ REDO FROM START +++
(additional meaningless text inserted here to override lameness filter for using all caps, even though that was the format of the work that is quoted above)
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
By throwing an evolution related question at the candidate you're giving them a chance to avoid harder and less popular issues. You're giving them an easy out.
The candidates know most Americans are religious. They'll lose no points by siding against evolution, they won't even lose points with the atheists what with religion being so pervasive in American society. If you're trying to ensure they win over the fundies and evangelicals, go ahead and give them an opportunity. Everyone else will be indifferent.
If you want to give them a challenge, and learn something about the candidates, then give them something political. Politics, being legislated morality and ethics, is the window to a person's soul. There's no better way to learn about someone.
For example, a great question would be "are 30,000+ innocent Iraqi civilian deaths justified given our goals and what we've achieved so far?" If they say yes, then you know they believe certain ends justify any means, good or bad, and from this one small insight you can predict how they'll behave on a number of issues. You'll know they will do evil in the name of good. You'll also know they have little regard for certain groups of what they must perceive to be lesser people (i.e. probably non-Americans). Either that or a general disregard for humanity.
I doubt any candidates would pass such a test. They would all willingly go to war for frivolous and unjustified reasons, they would all approve of extraordinary rendition and the disappearing of people, they would all jail enemies of state indefinitely without charge, they would all tap your telephones, there is nothing immoral, illegal or wrong they wouldn't do in the name of whatever fucked up ends they have.
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.
So then, while God may be recursive, he doesn't have any end condition.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Just because we are created beings does not mean that "God" must be a created being. Just because I can make a car, does not mean I have wheels. Think about it. We only have this universe as reference. An entity that made the system and defined its properties must not itself have properties of the designed system.
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
When discussing gaps in the theory of evolution, it's important to distinguish between "does evolution happen" and "what evolved from what, when, and how fast." Science is unanimous that it happens, but the specifics are, and probably will forever be, still being researched, and so our understanding changes.
Here's a car analogy: suppose you're at the scene of an auto accident, and you point to some aspect that doesn't make sense. That's a gap in our understanding of how Newtonian physics led to the evidence we observe. And if scientists studied that crash, they would probably have different theories of how it happened, and those theories would change over time. But unless you were driving at a significant fraction of c, there won't be anything that contradicts Newtonian physics. Despite the gap you found, it's still appropriate to teach physics to our high-schoolers.
The same goes for evolution - the gaps are in the details, but the theory as a whole is very solid.
BS. The entire justification for Intelligent Design is that something as complex as our universe couldn't of just happened by itself, it had to have had a creator. Obviously if our universe is to complex to have just happened, then the same must be true for our even more complex creator. If the creator could have just happened without a creator then there is no reason why the universe couldn't have just happened as well.
In other words, the whole theory is nothing but a contradictory, pseudo-scientific ploy to force God^W an unnamed creator who could be God but doesn't have to be God into the public schools. Even the creationists would have found the whole theory absurd back in the day before they became afraid to call themselves creationists in public.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Well, if the creator wasn't supernatural, then who created him? If Roundup-ready corn was created by Monsanto, which was created by human scientists, who were created by aliens, who were created by other aliens, at some point you need a being who wasn't designed by another.
To avoid an infinite regress of designers, you either need a designer who exists outside of causality (and is thus supernatural), or a process by which inanimate material can become alive (abiogenesis) and eventually human (evolution).
Without a way of testing for the existence of the supernatural force, it shouldn't even be given the status of hypothesis.
I think the appropriate term is "not even wrong".
who created the creator?
The Flying Recursive Spehgetti Monster!
Table-ized A.I.
So god crashed eons ago and humanity is just the core dump?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Fine. Prove evolution or falsify it... absolutely. The kind of absolutely that can be shown for Relativity, QM, and measured by some (probably very expensive but precise and accurate) ruler.
So you're looking for precise numbers? Like "if I lift these trees 3 meters of the ground, the average giraffe neck hight will increase .237 cm/generation until it reaches the trees"? Actually I wouldn't be surprised if you could get data like this in a tightly controlled experiment with they type of populations you can only get with bacteria. Of course your predictions would need to be based on some rather specific mathematical model, a minuscule subset of "evolution". The popular idea of evolution, what we're talking about here, tends to be more qualitative. Not all science is particle physics.
If you actually meant "absolute" and not "precise", then I fear you're confusing science with math. Science doesn't ever "prove" things in the absolute sense that math does. Science doesn't have the luxury of choosing the axioms.
This is moot anyway - the accuracy of evolution's predictions are irrelevant when comparing it to a "theory" that doesn't even make any.
Despite many humanly-imperfect drawings, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has no beginning and no end - he is a beautiful bifurcating strange-loop of Noodly Goodness (plus some meatballs for eyes).
RAmen!
Rather than ask whether they believe in evolution, why not ask if they believe in the Scientific method? Maybe the right question to ask the candidates is something like:
We can all see how successful the methods of Science have been at discarding wrong ideas about Nature that were widely believed for thousands of years, and we depend upon the ability of scientists to discover and correct mistakes in their ideas in order to build our wondrous technologies. The same scientific methods that have led us to computers and airplanes have brought us modern medicine and biology. As a biological researcher, the framework of Darwinian Evolution is as essential to my work as a microscope or a centrifuge. Do you believe that I should teach anything in my Biology classes that hasn't survived the rigorous testing of the scientific method?
It is testable in several ways.
First, it predicts what things we will discover in future digs. One of the complaints early on in the evolution/creationism debate was a lack of transitional fossils. These fossils hadn't been discovered yet. Evolution predicted that we would find them, and we did. Creationists then pointed out that there were new transitional fossils that hadn't been discovered (any time you fill a gap between one point and another, you're creating two new, smaller gaps). Evolution predicted that we would find those, and we did. Those were testable predictions. You're probably going to say it didn't predict anything because the fossils were already buried, waiting to be discovered. That same argument could be made for electrons before they were discovered. What it predicted was the result of future experiments (digs).
Secondly, and far less importantly, it predicts a useful technique — one that I use on a regular basis in computer science. Specifically, it led to evolutionary algorithms (of which genetic algorithms are one type).
If your point is that evolution is no more exact than F=ma, then I'll concede that point. I believe in evolution only to the same extent that I believe in quantum mechanics. It's an imperfect theory, but the best we've got.I believe in a lot of things, and science is definitely one of them. I believe in the scientific method as sure as I believe in myself.
Global warming is definitely based on several other theories, if that's what you're after. By your reckoning, it sounds like thermodynamics isn't a proper theory since it's based on statistical mechanics. The reason that global warming and thermodynamics are theories is that they make predictions, and these predictions have been verified.Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
So you're saying the desire of a candidate to eschew modern science and instead rely on mumbo-jumbo has no bearing on their ability to make decisions on running a country based on the available evidence?
Would you be happy for a witch-doctor to be in control of the health budget?
I never said you couldn't make smart-ass comments about whether or not you believe in a creator. :-)
The answer, of course, scientifically, is that we have no proof of a creator, and we have no proof of a lack of a creator. We just don't know, can't know, and couldn't know the nature or origins of a creator. It is therefore scientifically irrelevant, no matter how important or unimportant anyone feels the matter is on a more personal, philosophical, or spiritual level.
Now, belief, faith, trust in the supernatural and in stories we've been told, in personal experiences that seem subjectively outside the laws of physics for some reason, and whatever else mean people can believe in a creator. Indeed, there are a number of creation "myths" from around the world. Most "people of faith" call everyone's creation stories "myths" but their own, which of course they call the "Truth" (yes, often with a capital "T", as in the single, objective Truth).
I've known many a religious person who is open-minded enough to say, "I believe this, but I could be wrong and someone else could be right. I'll go on believing what I believe." That takes real faith and conviction, yet at the same time an open mind. I asked a Catholic priest once what it would mean if it turned out there was no God, and he said he'd feel pretty silly passing up a family and a normal shirt, and just laughed. I asked a Protestant minister the same question, and his response was that it didn't mean a thing if there was no God he was praying to, but it meant a great deal if there was a benevolent God that he didn't pray to (philosophy students might recognize Pascal's wager here). The minister went on to say that what we do here on Earth for each other would mean a great deal more if there was no God, because there'd be noone else to do it. He said that's the problem with people of faith who shutter themselves from the world to avoid temptation or for whatever reason, that there's work to be done here that doesn't get done without hands to do it.
I can see perfectly if many religious types are too closed-minded to accept science or even to be around people outside their own church why many scientists don't want to hear anything about religion. What I don't understand is why scientists, who are supposed to be the open-minded ones, would discount the possibility of some being or beings more powerful than humans who take some interest in what we do. Occam's razor demands that gods and demons are not considered as a cause for phenomena since any supposed inputs cannot be studied empirically.
There's really no more scientific evidence to disprove any supernatural religion than there is to prove any of them. (The supposed physical effects of certain supernatural hopes and wishes, like magical spells and telekinesis, can be tested of course, but the religion itself still, strictly speaking, cannot). The only plausible scientific answer is, "We don't know." If a scientist feels like adding, "..,And I don't care", well then that's fine too. Dismissing religion's _relevance_ to science is easy. Any person should be allowed to declare religion irrelevant to his or her own life, too. To dismiss that there's any possible truth to a belief in the supernatural is a religious decision as much as to accept that there is truth in that belief, and neither has any bearing on science.
It's easy enough to say that things believed to be miracles _could_ be happy circumstance. It's easy to say that prayer has a placebo effect or that the relaxation and calmness it can lead to are what helps patients who pray. But to dismiss the possibility of something it's impossible to test for, measure, or observe is unscientific. To dismiss a God, many gods, angels, demons, devils, sprites, fairies, gremlins, or whatever and that it's possible they might observe or effect things is frankly as unscientific as to say that they do observe and effect things.
Of course, adults should be able to say that science is irrelevant to their lives, too.
Creationists often try to lead you off track talking about the origins of life or even the universe. This immediately cuts out all that irrelevant nonsense and goes straight for the neck - if we didn't descend from apes, then why on earth could evolution, based on the premise that we did, make this prediction? There are more airtight pieces of evidence, like ERV patterns and the Vitamin C gene, but none so simple - two chimp chromosomes match the gene sequence, the human one has a second, broken structure that normal chromosomes have just one of, and it has bits of DNA in the middle that are normally at the end. Everything matches position with the two chimp chromosomes. Brilliant.
im in ur
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.
Only if you always make sure there's a towel in the boot.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Thank God! that secular, humanist people are turning the tide everywhere in the world (even in e.g. muslim countries -- see turkey) and relegating religion to the place it belongs, the private life of individual people.
What you describe as the "humanist people" from Turkey, is probably in reference to the sweeping reforms undertaken by Ataturk following the emergence of the Turkish republic from the ashes of the old Ottoman empire. Turkey had emerged as a modern state - a secular state, where religion was delegated to ones private life.
Unfortunately, in Turkey there is an ongoing backlash against secularists. For example, the people who won the recent elections in Turkey (AK party) are essentially very analogous to the religious extremists and their power bases in many parts of the world, except that they are good at spinning themselves as being "modern", just as fundamentalist Christian counterparts in the US for example. Its support base is generally the poor and uneducated - people with a very anti-intellectual bent. The only difference is that they are Muslim.
As in many countries, the teaching of critical thinking skills in Turkey has slid backwards by decades on account of education policies focusing on strategies for university entrance examinations and the much higher numbers of students passing through schools which could be described as fundamentally religious.
One of the by-products of all this: many people, even those who are not of a practicing religious background, treat "creation science" and "Intelligent design" as being "proven" scientific theories, just as similar counterparts in the US and other countries do. Interestingly, many fundamentalist Muslims and fundamentalist Christians have such almost identical viewpoints on this topic. When discussing the topic of evolution with a fundamentalist Muslim, I could well be speaking with the graduate of a 2nd rate Bible college in the US, had I not known better.
There is one scary thing I have observed when teaching at a university in Turkey. Students from fundamentalist Muslim backgrounds, and even secular ones, are referencing very famous creationist and "Intelligent design" sites located in the US for their written work to support their views in written topics such as those comparing people with animals. And this is at one of the better universities in the country I might add.
The anti-intellectualism of "Creation Science" and "Intelligent Design" is not just a problem in the US or in Christian countries...
Disclaimer: I am a foreigner who has lived and taught in Turkey for a few years now.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
You ignore the minor point of fact that Washington and Jefferson were dead when Darwin and Wallace proposed the theory of evolution, consequently they could not have an alternative to believing in creationism at that time.
Jefferson held the most advanced religious views of the time. He was a deist not a theist and was a unitarian. That is he did not believe in a personal god but rather a god that defined the initial laws of the universe and set it in motion. After that everything worked on the basis of god given physical law. Consequently Jefferson's religious belief would not have contradicted the theory of evolution.
If Jefferson had still been alive at the time Darwin first proposed the theory, I am sure he would have bee a supporter.
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
You are not going to win anybody over with facts.
... generosity.
The people who actually care about facts, are already on the side of evolution.
The people who do not believe in evolution, do so because the alternative appeal more to their feelings. They will not be swayed by facts.
Yes, you can probably make them look silly with their faith based opinions, but that will not win them over. It will only make the debate more dirty.
If you want to win them over, you have present evolution as an emotional alternative that can appeal to them.
Me, I think that's close to impossible, but more importantly, totally pointless.
I think that it would be more productive to make them understand the difference between belief and science, and get them to respect that other people may have other opinions on the matter. Make an emotional appeal to their sense of
TC - My Photos..
This seems like a good opportunity to challenge those candidates who say they do not believe in evolution.
It would be nice if people stopped saying "believing in evolution". I do not believe in evolution, because I do not believe in anything. I am however convinced, due to various solid evidences, that evolution is a perfectly valid theory.
Please, put it any way you want, but don't use that verb, we don't have faith in evolution, we are convinced that it's true because it's reasonable, and therefore, don't ask anyone if they believe in evolution, cause anyone in their right mind should tell you that they don't believe in evolution, no matter what their opinion is.
You just got troll'd!
I think you can remove the word "core" there.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Those who wish, for lifestyle reasons, to be atheists? I don't wish to be an atheist: I wish to hell there WERE someone in charge to fix things. But I look at the problem of theodicy, and see that a just and omniscient and omnipotent creator could NOT allow some of the horrors that have been visited upon the innocents of this world - so either I have to believe that God doesn't exist, or God doesn't care. By your definition, a God who doesn't care isn't a God at all, so you would call me an atheist.
You all disappoint me.
To Evolutionists: You have no sense of proportion. I don't vote someone in because he has amazing scientific knowledge. You all say that the good scientific evidence for evolution takes time and effort to present and understand (imagine teaching it to a tribal people somewhere). If a politician has had misinformation or just shoddy argumentation for evolution, is he really to blame for not becoming a scientist instead of a politician and discovering the TRUTH (TM) about the world? Besides, someone who believed that every single species was hand-designed by a loving creator might actually try to preserve the natural habitat they live in. I vote for someone to defend our country, enforce the laws, and try to work with the legislature who makes the laws in the first place. I know I'm being idealistic, but I really don't care if my candidate has some missing bits of knowledge. So what?
Plus, stop responding to the theory/hypothesis/science/philosophy semantics. Nobody cares about your terms but you. The creationists don't care what you call their ideas Your serious responses to an obvious red herring are embarrassing.
While we're at it, you do realize you will never learn from anyone you call delusional. Calling for a belief to be stamped out is a bit too much like a Salem witch trial for someone who supposedly has the truth on their side. You guys are proposing a scientific inquisition for the Republicans. Nobody likes being called a heretic. But the real lesson of the dark ages is that nobody benefits from calling other people heretics either.
To Creationists: Stop making this about evidence. You people have a lot to offer in clarifying the difference between history, science, religion, and philosophy - regardless of whether there is a God. You are one of the few groups that think that those four might offer competing narratives about the world, and even different values. Contribute better. That said, it is hard to have a debate while under attack.
What are you really asking? Do you want to frame the questions to control the answer or be fair? I haven't set foot in a church for over 20 years and I this whole debate always leaves me scratching my head. I just don't see the relevance, but then 30 years ago I thought typing class was a waste of my time! How much of this discussion is really about debunking Christianity? I can remember being in a Biology class in college where that was the way evolution was presented. That's philosophy not science. Ironically, I think you weaken your position by presenting evolution as incontrovertible facts. They aren't facts and never will be without the benefit of a "wayback" machine. It is a theory. If you try to wave a magic wand to make them facts, aren't you creating a hook for someone to attack the question rather than answer it? This discussion also makes me think that people should be careful what they ask for. If evolution becomes a fact, I can see this whole discussion becoming twisted. Won't one liberal argument will be used against another?
I don't understand why all this is a big issue anyway? Evolution should be a single chapter in a textbook just like magnetism and gravity. How does teaching evolution or intelligent design prepare our children for life in the 21st century? Would it not be better to simply teach kids science from a scientific perspective? Teach kids to make observations, develop theories and then test them? Give them all of the observable information, present the theories and let them work out conclusions. Why should science be presented so definitively? Wouldn't creating a generation of scientists that challenge established theories possibly make better scientists? Aren't the greatest minds in science those that think outside of the box and challenge the status quo?
Let's not teach our kids WHAT to think, but HOW to think. As humans, we have something within us that seeks to know things, that is one of the things that seems to make us unique among the life on our planet. Quit putting kids minds in shallow little boxes--both evolution and intelligent design are ways of looking at what is observable. If a mind is able to consider multiple perspectives on interpreting information and able to test and draw conclusions on its own, aren't we better off as a people? Why should we be locked into teaching only one thing when there are large groups of others that teach other things--even if they might be wrong? Sure, teach kids what is generally accepted, but let them know there are other theories... even if it includes spaceships and little green (or gray) men--which Intelligent Design is broad enough to encompass. You don't have to put it in the textbooks, just encourage teachers to present other theories as a general survey of "other thoughts on the subject."
There are many other things, like Critical Thinking, Math and Creativity that are so much more valuable to a young mind than something like Evolution and Intelligent Design. I don't care about where a politician stands on hot button topics like Evolution or Abortion... I want to know what they think are the critical changes we require in education that will make our children competitive in the world market during the 21st century.
Just my $0.02,
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
That such candidates as Brownback, Tancredo, and Huckabee, whose apparent science knowledge is not even at the third-grade level, can rise to such prominence in US politics leads me to ask a more general question:
"We live in a world that is ever more complex in the depth and breadth of technology. I realize that no politician, or any human for that matter, can be conversant in the nuts and bolts of every area of knowledge, but what can you say to convince me that you know enough about science and technology to be able to appoint legitimate experts to serve as your science advisers and agency chiefs?"
Ed Uthman, MD
Pathologist, Houston/Richmond, TX, USA
You seem to be a bit confused about what evolution and the fossil record tell us. Evolution is not a theory about how life got started - it's about how it changes over time. The comet idea is a theory about the origin of life, not the evolution of it.
As far as your chicken example goes, no-one believes evolution works that way. If a chicken suddenly gave birth to a chick that's a completely new species, what would it breed with to perpetuate the new species? (hint: the definition of species is largely a human construct, but it generally means that creatures of different species cannot inter-breed). The idea is more that species can be stable for a long time, but occasionally, changes happen quickly, in geological time-frames, anyway. For individuals of the species, there must always be a breeding stock that can interbreed, or it would die out! Surely that's just obvious? But, a small group of individuals might diverge from the main stock (perhaps isolated geographically) in relatively short periods of time. Oh, and the fossil record often does turn up intermediate species - but fossils are rare, so the evidence is hard to work with.
Scientists sometimes make big claims (they are only human!), but then (and this is the crucial bit) - they have to back it up with evidence. As time goes on, some established theories shift, as new evidence and thinking comes to light. The changing of stories isn't evidence that scientists are disreputable - it's evidence that they are reputable. The ultimate arbiter of truth is always reality, not dogma, after all.
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.
Sorry, that doesn't fly. We don't know what happened before the big bang and so whatever preceded the universe, if anything, was outside our conception of time as well. There is no reason why anything that can be said about the origin of a creator or its lack thereof can't also be said of the Universe.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Yes, because saying "I don't believe God exists, because there is no reason to believe that" is just as arrogant as saying "I don't believe Santa exists, because there is no reason to believe that." Non-belief in Santa/elves/bigfoot is just as logically untenable in non-belief in God. But when you don't believe in those other things, people don't suddenly act as if you're claiming to be omniscient. When it comes to not believing in anything else (ESP, alien abductions, nessie, etc) we know that people just mean "I see no credible reason to believe in this, ergo I don't believe in this." Suddenly when the noun is "God," then everything changes and someone pretends that the speaker is claiming to know everything. They aren't, and it's obvious. You can't prove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster isn't real, but you would't lament someone's arrogance for not believing in His Noodliness.
I have better things to worry about regarding politicians than what their personal beliefs are except to the degree that they have been shown to influence their decision making...
What kind of person makes decisions that are not influenced by their personal beliefs?!? I would hope that any politician I vote for has strong personal beliefs, based on fact and direct observation as much as possible, and makes every decision based on those beliefs.
include $sig;
1;
Why don't you quote Ron Paul's stance on evolution?
Also please quote where Ron Paul thinks that "The Constitution is an eternal suicide pact [or] that the Bible is the literal truth at every turn of the page"
Also, please show where Ron Paul is a "flip-flopper"
Are you also aware that Fred Thompson was a major lobbyist in Washington and is also a globalist?
Libertas in infinitum
Not quite. Contrary to what some rethorically challenged people like to state, you can prove a negative. You can prove that a certain entity doesn't exist by proving that it has contradicting characteristics. In this universe, there are certain well-established limits to physics and biology. I don't think it's at all clear that leprechauns "could" exist. For example, if they have those tiny heads, do they have enough brain cells to make them behave the way stories claim they behave?
You can't prove that Santa Claus doesn't exist (in fact, if you work in retail or marketing, you know he's very real), but you can prove that a sledge pulled by reindeer couldn't reach the speeds and accelerations required to visit every home on Earth during that one night. So you have to either accept that Santa doesn't exist or change your definition of "Santa Claus" to something slightly different (or very different), that at least could (even if you can't prove that it does).
The trouble with "god" is that there is no universally accepted definition. So, until you define what "god" is, indeed you cannot prove it doesn't exist. "Proof" of something that is undefined is logically meanigless. For some definitions of "god", its existence can be proven in purely logical terms, but what do we gain by that?
You can take any simple system and add layers of useless, self-cancelling complexity to it, so it would be trivial to "weave god into reality". The real question is: are gods necessary to make sense of the universe? And the answer to that seems to be a pretty resounding "no". In fact, if anything, attributing phenomena to supernatural, unknowable entities is a way to limit our understanding of the universe. Ockham's razor and all that.
To quote Lewis Carroll, "Don't be in such a hurry to believe next time - I'll tell you why - If you set to work to believe everything, you will tire out the muscles of your mind, and then you'll be so weak you won't be able to believe the simplest true things. Only last week a friend of mine set to work to believe Jack-the-giant-killer. He managed to do it, but he was so exhausted by it that when I told him it was raining (which was true) he couldn't believe it, and rushed out into the street without his hat or umbrella, the consequence of which was his hair got seriously damp, and one curl didn't recover its right shape for nearly two days."
And then there's the separate (but often associated) issue of religion, which is responsible for more irrationality, obscurantism, death and self-righteous cruelty than just about any other part of human culture.
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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The Bible was not given to us to explain everything. It was given to us to tell us what we needed to know.
So, sorry...the burden of proof (though it should be called the burden of evidence, not proof) still lies with those positing a supernatural being. We're just saying that the natural world exists, and trying to find explanations for things we see in that natural world. Positing something outside that natural world, whether it be magical leprechauns, genies, Star Trek's Q, God, or whatever, requires evidence to support that claim. You're asking people to stop developing explanations and just believe in something that doesn't really bring all that much to the debate.
Me being an atheist doesn't require faith in anything. It isn't that I think science can explain everything, but that science is the only tool by which we can understand the world around us. We have limited data, limited powers of perception, limited intelligence, and so on, so the process, being a human construct, is limited. But again, it's the only tool we have. If you're in the dark you can rely on the guy with the flashlight, even admitting the limitations of the flashlight, or you can stay in the dark with the other guy who tells you a) really nice comforting stories, and b) that the flashlight isn't all it's cracked up to be.
As the flashlight reveals that some of the story-teller's tales are false, the story-teller will get more and more upset and point out, accurately, that the flashlight can't show you everything. But the flashlight, however limited, is still the only alternative to the pretty stories. Science is that flashlight. Trust who you want, but I trust the guys who made medicine, airplanes, air conditioning, and so on. This isn't to say that the story-teller has no value whatsoever. People apparently need someone to tell them that they should be decent human beings because God wants them to be. And people evidently need hope that there is something else out there, that death isn't the end. But when it comes to the physical world, including how biodiversity came about, I'll defer to science every time. Evolutionary theory is critical to fields like antibiotic research, and we can't throw it out just because it doesn't fit well with your bible.
Which means zilch. Science can not be unanimous. Only people can be unanimous.
The question is if the people are unanimous, does that mean it is true? No, of course not. The only thing that is important is the evidence which speaks for itself.
Piling on only makes your contention look more suspicious, like you are trying to hide something, like perhaps a lack of evidence.