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Texas Creationist Museum Facing Extinction
gattaca writes "A small Texas museum that teaches creationism is counting on the auction of a prehistoric mastodon skull to stave off extinction. The founder and curator of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum, which rejects evolution and claims that man and dinosaurs coexisted, said it will close unless the Volkswagen-sized skull finds a generous bidder. 'If it sells, well, then we can come another day,' Joe Taylor said. 'This is very important to our continuing.'" Meanwhile, the much larger Creation Museum in Kentucky that we discussed and toured when it opened last year seems to be thriving.
Falsiblity. Predictive ablity.
Some resemblence to the facts we can find in nature.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Theories can be tested to be proven or disproven using scientific methods. Creationism cannot. What scientific research would you propose to test the "theory" of creationism? Evolution can be studied by examining DNA progression, fossil records, etc.
today is spelling optional day.
You do understand that it was Europe that dumped this religion on us?
No, they didn't. The modern, and very flawed, Evangelical movement was kicked into high gear by some power-hungry madmen by the names of Dwight L. Moody and Cyrus Ingerson Scofield. Moody had a big effect on the British and Irish, actually, promoting their crazed movement there, too.
* I'm a Protestant-leaning Christian, but definitely not of the Evangelical nature. Sadly, most of my friends and family are still under the sway of the madness called the modern Evangelical movement. I also have a soon-to-be-published book (electronic as well) that I'd love to share with slashdot readers who are interested in why it is time for Christianity to take a new direction.
The closest word to theory in the sense you use (as in 'guess') in the scientific community is 'hypothesis.' An hypothesis is just a guess. Maybe a somewhat educated one based on observation, by still just a guess.
OTOH, a theory is something much more substantial than a guess -- it is falsifiable, repeatable, consistent, and verifiable. Gravity is "just" a theory. Evolution and gravity meet these same scientific criteria.
Creationism does not. It is not verifiable (no, your 'Good Book' doesn't count). It is not falsifiable (we can't prove that without it, there would be no man). And it is not repeatable. (We can't just make a man in a lab from dirt.)
So Creationism doesn't meet the criteria for theory. It merely meets the criteria for hypothesis, and not a very good one as it's based on only one observation -- a 6,000 year-old story written in a book.
My blog
Evolution is not an article of faith. It's a matter of fact, something you can walk around and see in organisms that change quickly (bacteria, insects).
It's about 35 miles from me on the road to Lubbock. He has some really nice fossils, but his interpretation is just plain weird. He built a huge human leg bone to show people what the "giants" would have looked like. The problem is he didn't take into account the strength of the bone and simply scaled it up to giant size. The local schools take classes on field trips to see the museum, I need to ask the high school kid that works for me what they are told when they visit. Knowing the teachers around here they teach this stuff in their class, it's shame really.
Nope, this is just here in the US. Actually, I have problems even explaining what Creationism is to most of my European friends. In the end they sort of figure it out ("Oh, it's like that hollow earth stuff").
The church in many European countries is busy trying to show that if the Bible is read like it is supposed to (i.e. not taken literally) it really does correspond with the scientific findings. 7 days for god is obviously some billion years for man they tell you and they take it from there, showing how through metaphors the scientific facts known to us were hidden in the text.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
From the BioTech Life Science Dictionary: theory definition:"In science, an explanation for some phenomenon which is based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning. In popular use, a theory is often assumed to imply mere speculation, but in science, something is not called a theory until it has been confirmed over the course of many independent experiments." What makes it better than proposing Creationism?
- Evolution is supported by repeatable, publicly observable experimentation. Creationism is not
- Evolution is supported by massive amounts of publicly observable evidence. Creationism is not.
- Evolution is falsifiable. Creationism is not.
- Evolution makes testable predictions. Creationism does not.
Think about it. I strongly urge you to begin doing so, rather than following the lead of charlatans.Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Books used to be copied by scribes, and (despite a lot of care) sometimes typos would be introduced. Later scribes, making copies of copies, would introduce other typos. It's possible to look at the existing copies and put them into a 'family tree'. "These copies have this typo, but not that one; this other group has yet another typo, though three of them have a newer typo as well, not seen elsewhere..." This is not controversial at all when dealing with books, including the Bible.
Now, this process of copy-with-modification naturally produces 'family trees', nested groups. When we look at life, we find such nested groups. No lizards with fur or nipples, no mammals with feathers, etc. Living things (at least, multicellular ones[1]) fit into a grouped hierarchy. This has been solidly recognized for over a thousand years, and systematized for centuries. It was one of the clues that led Darwin to propose evolution.
Now, more than a century later, we find another tree, one Darwin never suspected - that of DNA. This really is a "text" being copied with rare typos. And, as expected, it also forms a family tree, a nested hierarchy. And, with very very few surprises, it's the same tree that was derived from looking at physical traits.
It didn't have to be that way. Even very critical genes for life - like that of cytochrome C - have a few neutral variations, minor mutations that don't affect its function. But we find a tree of mutations that fits evolution precisely, instead of some other tree. Wheat engineered to use the mouse form of cytochrome C grows just fine. (Imagine if a tree derived from bookbinding technology - "this guy used this kind of glue, but this other bookbinder used a different glue..." - conflicted with a tree that was derived from typos in the text of the books. We'd know at least one tree and maybe both were wrong.)
The details of these trees are very specific and very, very numerous. There are billions of quadrillions of possible trees... and yet the two that we see (DNA and morphology) happen to very precisely match. This is either a staggering coincidence, or a Creator deliberately arranged it in a misleading manner, or... common ancestry is actually true.
[1] Single-celled organisms are much more 'promiscuous' in their reproduction and spread genes willy-nilly without respect for straightforward inheritance. With single-celled creatures, it looks more like a 'web' of life than a 'tree'. But even if the 'tree' of life has tangled roots, it's still very definitely a tree when it comes to multicellular life.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
The English deported their religious fanatics to America and deported their criminals to Australia. Personally, I think America got the short end of the stick on that one. The Australians can party like a Kennedy.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
Pope Benedict believes in evolution.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
There are three meanings of theory, and people frequently misunderstand them.
..." This is the meaning that creationists usually think they are arguing against. But in science, it is never correct to use theory in this sense, though even scientists speaking casually often use it like that. The correct word for this in science is "hypothesis". It is certainly not the correct definition for the phrase "the theory of evolution".
(Theory defitition 1): "supposition" or "hunch". This is the use in the sentence "If my theory is correct, then
(Theory definition 2): "a description of a process that explains observed facts". These vary in their degree of supportability, and sometimes, multiple warring theories are supported to different degrees by existing experiment. For example, there are at the moment multiple theories about what process gives matter mass. Examples: The theory that matter is atomic, i.e. not continuously divisible. The theory that natural selection coupled with variation leads to evolution. The theory that particles have mass because of their interaction with the Higgs field.
(Theory definition 3): "a body of knowledge and understanding that supports much other past and future work"; it describes an entire framework of internally consistent principles, understanding and data. Meanings used in this sense:
* Atomic theory (the understanding of the structure of the atom and it's constituent particles and interactions that underlies all of nuclear science and chemistry)
* Evolutionary theory (the understanding of how organisms and species give rise to one another, and the genetic mechanisms thereof that underlies all of biology)
It's instructive to note that evolutionary theory and atomic theory are approximately equivalent in terms of evidentiary support and use in their fields. Both arose as type-2 definitions around the same time (mid 19th-century), supplanting prior theories (matter is continuous, God created all organisms at one time and they have been unchanged since then). Both have since then become into type 3 theories that completely underly the relevant fields (chemistry, biology).
Religious fundamentalists don't understand the difference between these definitions, and they think evolution is a "type 1" theory, more properly called a hypothesis. It is not. Evolution is the entire framework of over a century of biological research. Attempting to understand research in biology while rejection evolution is like attempting to understand chemistry while rejecting the atom. Or attempting to understand higher math while rejecting arithmetic. It's flat-out ludicrous.
(This is a repost of my statement from the last time we had this debate. I will keep reposting it, hoping to educate a few people eventually.)
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
"Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?"
But they save their strongest hate for evolution. The problem with the theory is exclusive to Christianity because it strikes to the core of the religion. The theology is straightforward: Christ died as a means to offer salvation from Hell. But the sticking point isn't that Genesis has a different account of the origin of the universe, it's that Christ died to save us from Adam and Eve's sin in tasting the fruit of knowledge. That sin tainted not only those two, but all their progeny, i.e. everybody. So there's nothing we can do, unless we accept that Jesus had a really bad weekend for our sins. That's our ticket to Heaven. But if we accept evolution, then there was no Adam and Eve, no Eden, no original sin, and therefore, no need for Christianity. That means a lot of people stand to lose a lot of money.
That's the reason nobody who's strongly opposed to teaching evolution talks about their reasoning beyond "It's not what the Bible says." Even believers cherry pick what they want to believe in the Bible; I don't know many Christians who believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, for instance. But if we start discussing the real reasons churches oppose evolution, then some people who maybe haven't really thought about it will start to see how truly weak the foundations of Christianity are.
- A pluralised second person (Several latin languages have them. See: Spanish, with -ais)
- A non-genitive third person pronoun (as "it" tends to be something of an insult when used with regard to people)
"Y'all" merrily fills one of those voids, yet is generally despised by those who fail to see its utility. Not only that, but with the apostrophe, it's technically correct.
There is "you all" and a few other multi-word forms that accomplish the same feature, but how is that any different from "do not" and "don't".
I am from Texas, and possess whatever accent I so choose (generally, I'm accused of being from Canada, regardless of where I am at the time). My only regional giveaway is that I use "y'all", not because I'm from Texas, but because it's an exceptionally useful word - same as any other contraction.
Now sod off, wanker.