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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.
... no one buy it!
Two states where I'm pretty sure you could find arguments against evolution just by looking at the local populace. I guess if they don't believe in evolution they don't feel the need to do so themselves.
today is spelling optional day.
Falsiblity. Predictive ablity.
Some resemblence to the facts we can find in nature.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Believe whatever you want while within your church. Just keep it out of the science classroom.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
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.
Creationism and evolution are both articles of faith
You start off sounding like a very reasonable person, and then end with that.
You have faith in something you cannot prove. Like the existence of a god.
There is tons of evidence for evolution and none against it so no "faith" is required. Or is gravity an article of faith too, because you never know, one day something might fall upwards?!
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?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
The funny part about the original CNN article I read on this said that Heritage Auction Galleries estimated the age of the thing to be at around 40,000 years old. At least the musuem guy is letting smarter people sell the thing.
Actually, I think a better argument is the predictiveness argument: Science is about learning to understand and predict the world around us, so we can make it better. (Of course 'better' has a host of different meanings, but regardless of which we choose, we need to be able to understand and predict, so we can choose the results of our actions.)
Evolution makes predictions that are accurate enough to be useful, regardless of whether is it aboslutely true or not. (For the record: It's as true as anything we've ever come up with.)
Creationism makes no predictions. In fact, it prevents them: Why did this happen? God did it. Will it happen again? If God wants it to. Will it stop? If God gets bored. Can we influence it? If God decides to be influenced, yes. In the end, 'God' is unknowable and unexplainable, so by saying God did it we have stopped all thought, inquiry, or prediction on the topic.
Which is probably why it is attractive to some people: They don't want to think.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
How can they sell this skull as a 40,000 year old artifact if they claim it's less than 6000 years old?
Sexuality. Other religions.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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!
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?
Logic?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
You are merely trying to conveniently gloss over the fact that for
the biologist, all views are open for debate and can be overturned
at any time. All it takes is for a "better idea" to come along.
You are attempting to conflate "faith" with "trust".
Faith is based on wishful thinking where as trust is based on experience.
Clinging to your religious view in the face of the current scientific
consensus is the perfect example of this distinction.
Creationism simply isn't that "better idea". Infact, it is what Evolution
REPLACED when it originally came along as the "better idea". It's history.
It belongs alongside the idea that you grow mice by combining scraps of
clothing and grains of wheat.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
c) purchase the skull and put it on a pike outside the front door as a warning to others.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
'If it sells, well, then we can come another day,' Come again?
I think that means his wife is cutting him off until he gets that damned thing out of the house.
Bronze age fairy tales vs a mountain of verifiable facts that also are the basic foundation of genetic research.
What possible prediction can anyone make from Creationism?
Evolution predicts that since all living things on the planet share DNA, then medical research using animals should produce useful medical procedures for humans.
When you cut someone open, it's not full of clay.
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
English
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Pope Benedict believes in evolution.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I have a question that has always troubled me regarding evolution vs. intelligent design. Is there any meaningful way, or even a need, to differentiate "created" things from "naturally occurring" things? Homo Sapiens may have "evolved" over millions of years, but there are objects on this earth (now even "living" objects) which are 100% the "creation" of us as a species, which would be very difficult to explain from an evolutionary standpoint.
At some point, we may become so advanced, technologically, that there is nothing curently living which is beyond our ability to recreate in a laboratory setting. How would one determine what occurs naturally and what was created? There will be lots of legal issues related to "accident of nature" or "industrial accident" related to when created things go bad, and how to prove they were created versus just having occurred by themselves.
To some extent, this is us "playing God" with nature. Somewhere down the road, a wholly "created" being will gain consciousness, evolve some (if left alone long enough), then wonder where he came from. Then they will have the same argument we are having now.
I'm no fan of ID as having "scientific" merit. But it does have philosophical merit. And some of the thought experiments make my head hurt.
(Posting Anon, because I don't like to discuss my personal politics or religion in public.)
As a Christian, I have toi say that the parent comment is the best modded comment I've seen today. Science and religion ask completely different questions. Science asks "how", religion asks "why".For the religious to try to undermine a useful scientific theory with an untestable "theory" like "creationism" is to show an appalling lack of faith in the God they claim to worship.
My take on it? Creationism per se is bunk, and evolution is the best theory I've seen to explein how God went about growing this wonderous universe.
Yes, I know it's heresy to admit being a Christian at slashdot, where athiesm is the site relgion and its proponents will stone with mod points anyone who dares believe that God exists, so mod me down. Arguing the existance of God with an athiest is like arguing the existance of red with a blind man.
You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest. "All we are is dust in the wind" - Kansas.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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.
Indeed. If you ever have the perverse pleasure of debating with a creationist, the first thing you need to discover is what it is exactly that he/she understands by the term "evolution". If you're scientifically literate at all, I can guarantee you that 99% of the time you'll be amazed and discouraged by what you're dealing with. These are people who are not necessarily stupid, but rather something worse than that: willfully and intransigently ignorant. It can be like arguing with a toddler.
Typically, they think that "evolution" means that a monkey got pregnant one day and out popped a human baby. They think that a theory in science (as in "just a theory") is an idle speculation that just shot out of some scientist's ass and beat out competing theories in a popularity contest. Their faith requires them to believe without question what they are taught by their parents and religious authorities, and so the notions of reason and sceptical inquiry carry zero weight with them.
There's a multitude of them, they're refractory to reason, and they vote. They are also easily manipulated by unscrupulous politicians who don't give squat about their beliefs but are willing to pander to them to enhance their own power.
This circus is going to go on for a long, long time.
Actually, there's no first-person accounts of Jesus actually having existed at all. So the whole thing is really not worth discussing, since the guy was probably a literary invention.
I would also suggest that the argument analogy you presented is inaccurate and misleading, as most analogies often are. Such topics cannot be summed up or dumbed down in such simplistic manners. Case in point, the popular "let me explain this as a car" analogy given so often on Slashdot. Your analogy presents a pre-determined supposition that God does indeed exist, which is the point of the argument in the first place, yes? You're an athiest because God wants you to be an athiest. "All we are is dust in the wind" - Kansas. I'm not sure what to make of this. Are you implying that atheism is a state at which humans arrive at, being theistic at first? I would propose that humans come out of the womb atheistic and them develop theism at a later date. This can probably be proven by the fact that there are plenty of religions out there that do not advocate "God" in a Christian fashion, or are monotheistic, or something completely different. Unless you're one of the "all paths lead to God" people, of course...
And don't forget world 36 on Super Mario Brothers. That one can be pretty tricky if you don't know what to expect.