Slashdot Mirror
Correcting Misperceptions About Evolution
Beagle writes "The science of evolution is often misunderstood by the public and a session at the recent AAAS meeting in Boston covered three frequently misapprehended topics in evolutionary history, the Cambrian explosion, origin of tetrapods, and evolution of human ancestors, as well as the origin of life. The final speaker, Martin Storksdieck of the Institute for Learning Innovation, covered how to communicate the data to a public that 'has such a hard time accepting what science is discovering.' His view: 'while most of the attention has focused on childhood education, we really should be going after the parents. Everyone is a lifelong learner, Storksdieck said, but once people leave school, that learning becomes a voluntary matter that's largely driven by individual taste.'"
Is the origin of life really a part of the theory of evolution ? I thought it was the origin of species. The origin of life, to me, seems more like a discrete (soapy, fatty) chemical process that doesn't have a lot in common with the process of evolution. Why convolute the two ?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Some people aren't learning.... They simply take whatever their political party happens to push and parrot it. Take intelligent design or global warming for instance.
You would think that he would have learned that 90% of people aren't.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
(Yeah, yeah, I know... no one RTFAs on /..)
They discuss that, and agree with you. The reason is that in the eyes of the public, the two are regularly conflated, especially by religious hacks trying to dispute evolution. So, they discuss the relationship and lack thereof (they're not completely unrelated, actually), and also discuss why they're talking about both.
The short answer is that they were trying to summarize the current state of scientific knowledge as relates to a particular political and religious debate, and both evolution and the origin of life are part of that debate.
"and many of the major adaptations we view as designed for a specific lifestyle actually originated as an adaptation for something else entirely."
Not worth reading past that I'm afraid.
Additional plugins are required to display all the media on this page.
Those that can't...teach.
"Everyone is a lifelong learner", Storksdieck said, "but once people leave school, that learning becomes a voluntary matter that's largely driven by individual taste."
Thank Bhudda for lifelong learning driven by individual taste.
So, I was never that interested in evolution back in college... just didn't seem like it would have that much of a practical effect on my life.
Who wants to educate me about this stuff? Bonus internets if you can do it in under five hundred words.
From the summary there's no sign that the article says anything about what I regard as the largest misperception--but that might just be simple par for the /. course. On the other hand, if you take the time to read and consider the article carefully, then anything you post about it will be moot, because the EAS (Effective Attention Span) of /. is around 40 minutes. Ergo...
Ma Nature just doesn't care about the waste. Of course the anthropomorphism just obscures things more, but the basic thing about natural evolution is that anything goes--but almost all of the changes lead directly to death. Ma Nature's approach results in vast numbers of tiny variations of the same basic forms that are all scrabbling for survival in a tiny niche. She isn't betting on the existence of a benevolent mutation. She just doesn't care.
Lately I was thinking that one of the weirdest aspects is that things worked out so that every one of us humans is a unique permutation. It would be 2^46 possibilities if you just started with one set of distinct genes from the chromosomes of a single mother and father, but there are so many variations for each of the genes that the actual number of potential human beings is vastly larger than that. Insofar as our genes contribute anything to the situation, each of us could be uniquely suited for some niche on earth. Talk about over-engineering?
Of course the likelihood that we'd ever find such perfect niches is pretty much negligible--but again Ma Nature doesn't care. If we wipe ourselves out in our frustration, she'll just start over again with the surviving cockroaches. So have a nice day.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
He demanded that I support the relationship of Neanderthals with other homo genus members (not even arguing the sapien angle) with fossil evidence of Neanderthals in Africa and only conceded error so far as to say that Neanderthals are as related to homo sapiens as snakes are related to worms. This is an otherwise intelligent person who believes he understands evolution and science fairly well. Apparently he attended a lecture a few years ago on the Lucy find and somehow mutated that lecture into his current understanding. How can you engage with people like this in a productive way without being insulting? TFA addresses the basic misunderstanding and urges for consistently rejecting these sorts of positions, but is that even my priority at this point? Everything about the thought process he's using to arrive at his conclusions is flawed, but his insistence that he knows what he's talking about makes it impossible to discuss anything he might disagree with meaningfully.
Plus, he's an aspiring breeder.
God'll getcho for dat !!
HE is YOUR judge, jury, and EXECUTIONER !!
Everyone knows that life was created 6000 years ago. Saying anything different is just blasphemy
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/arts/24crea.html
Everyone who does is stuck in an infinite "Next Page" loop. This weeds them out of the gene pool, and only those that don't RTFA will survive.
Seriously. I went to a lecture series on evolution, and was rather disappointed upon leaving.
The speakers spent most of their time discussing why Intelligent Design is wrong, and getting into semi-religion-bashing. I heard nothing about any of the things that the summary to this article mentions, for instance, which was actually something I wanted to know more about. I'm not very familiar with all of the specific evidence myself (I'm not a biologist).
Now look -- as a scientist, I can completely respect and agree with the fact that ID is not science, for a multitude of reasons. But look at it from the point of view of someone "new" to science that was curious -- they showed up to an event, hoping to learn more about what evolution is and understand the "debate", and all they heard was how Creationism is wrong and how we need to fight religious groups and educate the people about the truth. "Educate with what?", that person will ask. "They haven't given any proof yet, and just seem to talk about how much they hate religion when they get together.". THAT is what the average person sees, and it doesn't really make scientists look good, and gives ammunition to the people that spread misinformation about evolution. Will that person ever go back to an evolution talk in order for us to clear up misconceptions? Probably not; forever, that person will now think "Wow, Evolutionists are crazy, I'm not going to that again.".
There's other issues of course, but the public image of an evolution scientist right now needs to be cleaned up before many will even bother to listen.
I don't see why anybody not in this field would care at all. The only use I've seen of evolution in relation to the population at large is to convince everybody that all religions are wrong. I don't see any point in trying to "educate" people about a topic that does not affect them in any way, especially if that topic is going to cause more trouble than good.
My preferred name is frazz, but someone keeps taking it. If you see him, tell him I said hi.
Three reasons:
- No, not everyone is a lifelong learner. That's the ideal not the reality. Just look at how hard it is for some older people to pick up computers after 40.
- The religion that's indoctrinated them has done so since birth. You're going to ear bash them for an hour or two and expect them to change their lifelong beliefs? You'll only create resentment.
- You have a much better chance at reaching the parents through the children. However if you only reach the children, it simply won't be an issue in 40 years.
Limit going after the parents to insisting that science is taught in science classes and religion is not.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Life must have originated by a generalized and initially weaker version of the evolutionary process.
Essentially, in
a. certain intermediate-free-energy thermodynamic regimes (regimes in which common
elements and molecules can co-exist in all three of solid,liquid, and gaseous phases so that rigid and semi-rigid
structure can be combined with constrained energy flows),
and with
b. the right soup of lots of different common and chemically combinable elements trapped together in a gravity well,
you get the preconditions for randomly occurring structural and process experiments.
Some of these randomly occurring but probable-due-to-the-regime-and-the-ingredients experiments
end up making structural and process fragments that alter/interact with/use their environment in such a way as to
incrementally, or in some cases dramatically, increase the probability of a similar structure or process
fragment recurring nearby in time and space to the first one. This is already a positive feedback loop.
Eventually, by chance, some cluster of these self-probability-improving structure+processes, a cluster
most likely made of smaller self-made-more-probable structure-process fragments, reaches a threshold
at which its robustness leads to a probability of 1 of structure and process like that existing in the general
area.
Pattern self-preserving functionality transcends pattern occurrence improbability.
Call it stochastic evolution transforming into classical evolution.
Call it the origin of life if you like.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Getting people to change their opinions, beliefs, or conclusions is just difficult all over. For example, a group of smart -- really smart (I mean two-plus-standard-deviations-out-of-the-global-mean and scientifically-trained smart) -- people recently debated how to define a planet.
They and their fathers had grown up thinking that Pluto was a planet because of mankind's relative inexperience at astronomy. Recently, mankind learned facts that required rethinking of what "planet" meant so that when the term was used, everyone knew what it did and didn't mean.
Remember how easy and sensible that debate was? When it was "over", the definition had as many footnotes as principles.
And those were scientists. Heaven help us when we have to reteach anything to the general public.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
You know which one it is, you've seen it in libraries, books, this thing called the internet, etc. It's even the first hit on GIS if you look for evolution. Why is it so bad? It suggests a linear, goal oriented version of evolution, where newer species replace older species. In it's worst case, this becomes "If folks came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys around?".
The modern view of evolution should be an image more like a tree, with many branches starting at the root. Most species will be extinct by now, but a few them will still be around.
In addition, the only thing random about evolution is mutation, which creates variation within a population.
Finally, as someone else said as well, origin of life != evolution. Nice going for that article.
I keep hearing statements like this from evolutionists. Now, I personally accept the Creation hypothesis, not because of blind religious belief, but because I believe the physical supports it. The question is not whether evolution is possible (given enough time and luck, anything is possible), but whether it actually happened. I think that the physical facts, such as the massive quantities of rapidly-buried fossils, the Grand Canyon, the mitochondrial DNA studies performed at Berkeley in 1987 [1], and the existence of comets (to name a few) are better explained by the Creation and Global Flood hypothesis than the Evolutionary theory. If the evidence actually supports the Evolutionary theory as many scientists claim, I would like to see the facts. Surely, nobody is expected to believe evolution simply "because science said so." Where can I find this conclusive physical evidence? Evidence that is only compatible with an evolutionary origin of the universe? Does anybody know of some good books on the subject?
[1] Rebecca L. Cann et al., "Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution," Nature, Vol 325, 1 January 1987, pp. 31-36
Also see Ann Gibbons, "Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock," Science, Vol. 297, 2 January 1998, p. 29 for evidence that our common female ancestor lived approximately 6500 years ago. I'm not making this stuff up; the sources cited are evolutionists.
How could bands of self-absorbed, intellect snob atheists shouting "HA HA HA HA! YOUR GOD DOES NOT EXIST!" possibly cause any kind of public confusion and division?
-1 Troll here we come!
That's very informative. BTW, what were that kid's parents thinking?
Try to learn more. When i learned about evolution, i heard nothing about intelligent design (neither pro nor contra).
It isn't the scientists fault that ID reared its head in the USA and they got to 'defend' their theory.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
His view:...Storksdieck
Ancestor of a Dinosaur's dick?Fewer clauses! Start sentences with uppercase!
This has some big consequences.. that recursion would mean that whatever was a common ancestor would need a common ancestor,, all the way down. and perhaps plants and animals are fundamentally different arising from different organisms, and a few trunks might appear for bugs, fungus, and bacteria..
By choosing traits carefully, a phylogeny was developed, which related animals to each-other.. strangely this worked really well.
Anyway, evolution predicts that there is a tree structure, and that endpoints dont cross over.. so mammals dont get 4 chambered lungs like birds, but might still have some egg laying abilities like reptiles. Not should we see the octopus eye structure in humans. or bug armor on birds. Armadillos will have armor from keratin like a rhino horn, or fingernails.
Anyway, once molecular biology and sequencing came out, it solidly backed the theory.. Phylogeny people have been re-mapping the tree, bacteria took some serious adjustment, larger organism less so.
Now there is a push to generate "ancestral genomes" so that we have an idea of what the predecessor organisms were capable of... and where some of the novel enzymes popped into being. So enzymes which appear to be adaptation from our last ice age might be related in some way to survival of the cold, or eating rodents without GI distress. But with some timing, and some idea of the climate, the flora, and fauna some good guesses can be made as to why a subtle change might have happened.
So evolution theory may help in figuring out why humans stopped making vitamin C, and rats never need a vitamin C pill or fruit in their lifetime.
Or it can confirm things that we might already have guessed.. that humans make less stomach acid during pregnancy might be an evolutionary adaption to morning sickness.. because most pregnant women don't seem to have chronic bulimia problems, ie rotten teeth, esophagus ulcers, which would occur at higher acid concentrations. anyway, once they find the control mechanism I'm betting that it'll point to roughly the time when we started bipedalism.
Yes evolution is science, it does matter, knowing the history of automobiles lets us understand why tempered glass isnt appropriate for a windshield. Knowing the path that our ancestors evolved with lets us know what we should watch out for when we start tinkering.
Storm Storm
I read most of the posts in this thread. I counted only two instances of posters referring to evolution as a theory. It appears as if most of you, dare I say, regard the Theory of Evolution as the word of...God.
Genetic variation is an induced property. It is easier to achieve, since less error correction is needed; it makes the species less vulnerable to f.i. viral attacks; and it encourages evolution thanks to much more frequent 'prototyping'. Hence species with slightly different genes for each member are more likely to succeed in the long run.
"but once people leave school, that learning becomes a voluntary matter that's largely driven by individual taste."
What's wrong with having education voluntary and driven by your own taste? Is that what makes us interesting individuals and not some Gattaca?
The Evolutionist Evangelicals !
I'm still waiting for the fundamentalists realize that the laws of physical dictate evolution as they must follow the same laws that govern the universe. Therefore whatever created the laws of physicals has also created the evolutionary process. God and evolution can co-exist; it's just Genesis's literal interpretation and evolution that are at odds.
I suggest that we make a rule that if you do not believe in evolution you cannot be prescribed any of the newer antibiotics in case you get a bacterial illness since the earlier ones should be just as effective. If creationists are right, they will save some money, and if they are wrong we will exert a gentle evolutionary force toward people with better critical thinking skills.
At the intersection of computation and biology.
Of course I think that evolution is a theory. That's because I'm a scientist, and I know how theories work.
If the theory of evolution couldn't be proven to be true and correct, it wouldn't be a theory. It would just be conjecture, like for example Intelligent Design.
One big error in the article is that life started on earth and then led directly to modern life forms.
It seems quite feasible, possibly likely, that the first few times life started on earth, in the early solar system, it got extinguished by another big impact causing a global disaster. How far along evolution got between these total extinctions is unknown. All we know of today is the last time life started, and was not extinguished by some global disaster yet.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
> Only real diffrence is that evolutionary theory suggests that everything is completely random
It is probably better if you actually know something about the topic before you put down your comments in (virtual) print.
Mutation is random, selection is not.
You're reading those aritcles you cite impropperl. But I dont' care. What I want to know is what evidence you think you have to support creationism hypothesis[sic]. FYI, Creationism isn't even a hypothesis. It's a belief. For it to be a hypothesis, it has to be a scientific question that is testable.
I previously felt an obligation to inform the misinformed about a variety of topics. I've decided that the average person cannot be informed, they outright reject facts, evidence, and are almost incapable of critical thought. How the hell are you supposed to inform someone who rebuts with "yes, but the bible says..." or they start telling you about how they feel or what they "believe", when you thought you were discussing facts.
I became disenchanted over the last 8 years or so, as we were able to watch videos side-by-side of a politician stating "I stabbed a dog in the heart." and then a second video stating "I've never stabbed a dog." and then some member of the public is questioned about what they saw and they don't even recognize that conflicting statements were made. Then an "expert" begins discussing the two statements and is somehow able to reconcile completely contradictory statements into a seamless truth. It's like we're not observing the same reality. Of course since reality is a mental construct, it's true in some respect that we're not observing the same reality. And if we're not even in the same reality, how the hell can I possibly inform them of the laws and theories that govern the reality I'm in? I live in a world with gravity, evolution, electro-magnetism, chemical reactions, thermodynamics... they live in a world of magic, "truth", and gravity pulls down because that's how it feels today, and universes that pop-up out of nowhere because we live in a world designed like a video game.
And what's so weird is that I'm not even a skeptic. I like to believe I'm pretty open-minded. If any of my knowledge comes into question, I'm ready at the drop of a hat to re-examine things and see where I stand.
I guess I'm at the point now where I don't care if people like Bush ever acquire something approaching intellect. They can stay stupid for the rest of their stupid lives.
His lecture data was completely convincing (I'm a physicist, and can read graphs with the best of them). Furthermore, this guy is not a corporate figurehead; he explicitly states that he is for all the energysavings we can think of, he just hates the current media hysteria around global warming, and the fact that it's supposedly all our fault.
Bart
what about 4) a fanatical devotion to the pope?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
PZ Myers put it pretty distinctly:
"'Evolution is a theory about the origin of life' is presented as false. It is not. I know many people like to recite the mantra that "abiogenesis is not evolution," but it's a cop-out. Evolution is about a plurality of natural mechanisms that generate diversity. It includes molecular biases towards certain solutions and chance events that set up potential change as well as selection that refines existing variation. Abiogenesis research proposes similar principles that led to early chemical evolution. Tossing that work into a special-case ghetto that exempts you from explaining it is cheating, and ignores the fact that life is chemistry. That creationists don't understand that either is not a reason for us to avoid it."
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/02/15_misconceptions_about_evolut.php
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
That, and the plants on Earth before the creation of the Sun.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Lil' Jon? Is that you?
That, and the plants on Earth before the creation of the Sun. Light was in existence before the sun.
God spoke to me.
Everyone needs Jesus
Yup just like every fish needs a bicycle.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
There are self-replicating objects that do not seem to be alive, but they do grow and expand to fill their niche.
That's the problem with abiogenesis: we need to define what counts as alive before we can say what started life.
Mind you, that's a problem religions avoid quite assiduously too: where does the soul get put in? Too early and the infant dies with a soul (natural termination). Too late and we have premature babies without a soul. So where does "life" begin? Why do humans get one but not Apes? How different from a human does a human have to be before it doesn't get a soul? E.g. did "Lucy" have a soul?
PS your PZ Meyers quote means nothing. It just states a position and doesn't actually bring anything to the table.
Abiogenesis is chemistry, correct. But chemistry doesn't define what "life" or "alive" is. And that definition IS what Abiogenesis is. As I said, we already have self-organised non alive collections that exhibit many of the characteristics of life. We have a line which is "definitely alive" and a line that is "definitely not alive" but these lines DO NOT MEET.
Abiogenesis is how to bridge the gap between to show how "Not alive" and "alive" are part of a spectrum and something "not alive" can gain the characteristics we assign to the "alive" side. If we never find how that happens, maybe THAT is the "irreducible complexity". But the IDers aren't looking for it. They take on faith that anything they don't understand NOW is irreducibly complex. And that isn't how to learn. It's just dogma.
Does PZ Meyers' discourse help in that goal?
That depends on how you translate the Hebrew word transliterated as yom and its other uses throughout at least the Torah, if you're into historical criticism.
how to invest, a novice's guide
As expected... That link is just a troll.
Perhaps it would help clarify the situation if, instead of referring to the 'Theory of Evolution', everyone could talk about the 'Law of Nature' that is Evolution. It is no longer in doubt, so why don't scientists talk the talk. There are no life forms which cannot evolve, so evolution is intrinsically bound up with life. No life without evolution, no evolution without life.
"Misperceptions"
Give up now, you've already lost.
But plants on Earth were not. At least, not according to Modern Science, with which you appear to wish to reconcile your Bronze Age creation myth.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
And how does it exclude median or mode as an average?
The average person has two legs. Some people have fewer than this. A very rare few have more.
Sounds right, it's the stupid mathematician playing semantic games saying it's less than two legs. If it sounds silly (and the REASON mathematicians say this is because they themselves know it) it IS silly.
Now that average person is the mode. It's the same as saying "humans have two legs".
The mean number of legs is 1 + something legs, but nobody HAS that number of legs. So it has zero people in its' set. Not a useful average.
Median is if you don't know or have any reasonable way to guess how to calculate the mean.
How many legs does the average creature on earth have?
No way to work it our, but we have some with a hundred or more legs (millipedes are overrated...) and some with no legs. And what's defined as a leg?
Meh. How about 50. If we pick less, if there are more millipedes than we thought, we're easily too low. If we pick more, and we have a lot more ants with six than we thought, we'd be too high.
50 means if every number is equally likely (the null hypothesis), the mean would also be 50.
Median.
Average.
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 37 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
What's the average wait to post to slashdot?
Tip 2 - completely ignore the Old Testament, as it's mythical nonsense.
Tip 3 - stick to the Gospels - Paul was an authoritarian prick and should be discounted by anyone with common sense.
Tip 4 - don't take any of it literally, especially not in translation.
Tip 5 - you can come to the same moral conclusions on strictly utilitarian grounds, so gods aren't strictly necessary.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
The problem is not evolutionary theory or his understanding of it.
People everywhere need to be educated in the various logical fallacies that they apply in everyday conversations, let alone debating theories and the nature of life.
Wikipedias entries on logical fallacies is a good starting point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy
Recognise when people throw up strawmen, apply the fallacy of the consequent, or simply commit ad hominem attacks and you can soon break down their arguement and get to the root cause of their misconceptions.
It's not easy, but it's the only way....other than shouting loudest.
> Everyone needs Jesus, but not everyone needs to be a scientist.
:P)
Prove it.
(Mods, this is Insightful.
/quote> Or, you know, just take God out of the equation and everything fits as well... I don't see any reason at all why we need to make the God assumption in the first place.
Science should be secular for the simple fact that religion has no concrete backing at all. Religions come and go. Some believe in Jesus, some in the Torah, some in Allah, some in Buddha, some in Krishna, some in Xenu, etc etc... There is no reason whatsoever for any decent scientist to favor one superstition over another, and even more importantly, it shouldn't accept _ANY_ superstition at _ALL_, because even if there is a divine entity or magical entity or whatever, nothing proves that we humans know of it and that we interpret it correctly. Just the many many many different interpretations inside each superstition should be a good indicator that those superstitions are not reliable.
History has shown that whenever a scientist surrendered to superstition to explain certain aspects he doesn't understand, it just puts a stop to further development, often leading to centuries of stagnation before someone puts the divine link in doubt and we once again can move forward.
On a side note, Science should be secular but not atheistic, Science should not have a goal other then seeking knowledge.
The real problem in this debate is the same problem that you have in all politics, which is short term vs long term. People live in the short term while humanity evolves in the long term, and people try to push their positions in the short term, often creating problems in the long term. If evolution is wrong, it will be debunked by the scientific community, just like all the other erroneous theories have been debunked in the past. If you believe, and are not just practicing wishful thinking, your best course of action to debunk evolution, is to accept it! Believe me it's every scientist holy grail to debunk a widely (if not generally) accepted theory, because it's when those generally accepted theories are debunked that science moves forward, and that scientists are glorified (read Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Curie, Galileo and even Darwin himself) !
And that is all I have to say about that.
_I_ do not need Jesus. YMMV.
No, nobody needs Jesus, except perhaps a few people on the verge of committing suicide or murdering some people.
Everyone else (the sane people) needs water. And food. Not much else.
It has the better stories, though. Murder, war, bloodshed, all the good stuff.
Tip 4 - don't take any of it literally, especially not in translation.
There should be another tip that explicitly refers to Revelations.
(And you'll notice that plenty of the commentariat over at his place does as well, though I suspect the difference isn't a deep one.)
While I can see how evolutionary theory provides insight into abiogenesis (Spiegelman's Monster, anyone?), the fact remains that what we know about life on earth would work exactly the same whether a small initial population of prokaryotes arose by an as-yet-unknown abiogenic process, was placed here by aliens, or was zapped into place by His Noodle Appendage. Of course, what we know about tetrapod evolution would be utterly unchanged if we had some kind of omphalos thing happening prior to thir divergence from the rest of the fish.
I suppose I see his point, but I maintain that the proper response is "nothing we know about the emergence of the diversity of life on earth is affected in the least by how life emerged; while it's a fascinating topic, the two questions--the origin of life and the origin of species--are not the same one." No matter whether evolutionary theory can provide insights into abiogenesis, the two are fundamentally different things, and while it may make no sense to wall them off from each other, it is a misconception to assume that the theory of evolution rests or depends on a working theory of abiogenesis--and that's the real assertion being made.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
It reminds me of a time when I was in middle school, and my mother had a bit of a faith panic which led to her to try to make up for several years of religious doldrums in the family. One of the first things she did was drag me to an adult Bible class at the local M.S. Lutheran church.
Now, I don't know what a Bible class is supposed to be, but our first lesson set the tone. The pastor in charge made a whistle-stop tour of all the conservative talking points--sex, the Media, welfare, etc.--and finally landed on evolution. He then proceeded to tell us all about his "friend," the biologist. This biologist friend of his had told him a bunch of anecdotes about carbon-14 dating, such as that it had identified some mollusk as being several hundred million years old despite being fresh.
This is of course utter horseshit, as carbon-14 levels taper off into nothingness in a few tens of thousands of years, and the pastor no more had a biologist friend than I have an imaginary one. But it just illustrated to me how cynical YEC's can be when they know they're fighting for Truth. The saying that everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts comes to mind here. It's not that the YEC audience doesn't listen to the facts, it's that, for them, something as abstract as billion year evolutionary time spans doesn't have any concrete facts , and they're as good of a judge as anyone to choose between what this pastor says about science, and what they hear in class.
I prefer Kontact personally. *ducks*
It seems quite feasible, possibly likely, that the first few times life started on earth, in the early solar system, it got extinguished by another big impact causing a global disaster.
:)
Actually this is a fascinating subject.
The evidence shows that life appeared just about at the earliest point it could have, pretty much as soon as the earth cooled from a molten ball to a solid surface. And at that time the earth was still taking the occasional insane extermination-level impact.
Allow me to define "insane extermination-level impact". An impact that covers the earth in vaporized rock, boils the oceans bone dry in a matter of days, and leave the entire surface of the earth hot enough to melt lead. Serious sterilization.
Which left a bit of a puzzle on how the record of life on earth is apparently a continuous fixture, from its very first appearance.
In the last several years there has been quite a bit of biological research/exploration in conjuction with commercial mining. It turns out that mines are loaded with all sorts or never-before-seen kinds of bacteria. Exotic bacteria that live off the chemistry of the minerals themselves, and living and spreading throughout the endless cracks in the rocks. Our deepest mines are well over over two miles deep and drill sampling even deeper, and the rock is loaded with bacteria and water creeping through the cracks. At 2.2 miles down into the crust the temperature rises to over a hundred degrees F, and just keeps climbing the deeper you go.
And someone did a neat computer calculation. They modeled the temperature gradient of the crust as it goes down to the sterilizingly hot molten depths below, and they modeled the incinerating heat of a megaimpact. The heat from above works its way down through the crust incinerating everything as it goes for months and years. But the impact is a heat pulse, and the surface does begin to cool back down over time. The downwards pulse of heat decays.
It turns out that the molten sterilization zone below and the impact sterilization pulse from above never quite meet in the middle. Deep down in the crust there remains a merely "very very hot" zone in between where some extreme heat tolerant bacteria could and would squeak by. Bacteria which would work their way back up to recolonize the surface as soon as it cooled.
A seriously neat little chunk of science
We are descended from heat-extremophile rock-eating bacteria that survived multiple insane incinerating impacts by hiding out in the deep crustal cracks.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Final speakers name.
It is a common meme that skeptics are "closed-minded," when the reality, as you have explored, is that it is the closed-minded who will proclaim, "BE OPEN MINDED!" to those who will not accept their chosen beliefs because they are unable to actually support them with little things like, "facts congruent with reality."
Is the idea that people evolve to be somehow 'better'.
That is not the case at all. They evolve to fit their
environment. If violence, greed, and ignorance are
traits that lead to more offspring, then we'll get
more violent, greedy and ignorant with each successive
generation. If people can survive despite being lazy and
stupid, they will just bear more lazy, stupid offspring.
Somewhere in outer space, the little green men are listening
to a giant flushing sound, as mankind goes down the crapper.
Once you start making concessions there's no way to stop. If parents get the idea into their heads that the world is "really" 6000 years old and science is just extrapolating into a nonexistent past, why would they support further science education for their children? How are you going to convince them that, after a mere 6000 years of "real" evidence, we can draw conclusions about the nature of evolution? If the Bible (plus associated authorities) seems to be the only source of "reality" then they will attack science even more.
I would take a different tack on the problem. Next time someone complains that some science is a hoax (evolution, global warming, stem cells, etc.) try pointing out that true faith can't be threatened by scientific evidence. If they really believe what they claim to believe then science can't touch them. Remind them that Job piously accepted the death and destruction around him. Raising a stink about science indicates that their faith is weak.
Sooo many people oppose the theory of evolution because they don't know what it is. I'm willing to wager that at least 99% of these people are of Judeo-Christian-Islamic faith. These people oppose the theory because they claim the Earth is only ~6000 years old or so. However, the theory of evolution makes no assumptions about how old the Earth is. What these people are ignorant of is that they are confusing the theory of Evolution, which deals purely with biology, with the Big Bang theory, which deals more with physics and astronomy.
So, in short:
Theory of Evolution!=Big Bang Theory
How when Darwinism and the origins of life are discussed on /., despite many protestations to the effect that Darwinism is without serious errors or flaws and doesn't actually oppose (true) religion in any way at all [ah, but no true scotsman eats porridge...], the number of a-theistic or anti-god or anti-creator statements always are extremely numerous? In fact, it is difficult for a rational person to cohere the beliefs of a creator/divinity with the beliefs in molecules-to-man cosmic and biological evolution. Steven Jay Gould's attempt is nothing more than embarrassing hand-waving to create two separate non-overlapping magisteria that in fact overlap in empirical predictions quite systematically.
Actually, I thought Ms. Garrison summed it up quite nicely.
...retard frog-sqirrel, and then *that* had a retard baby which was a... monkey-fish-frog... And then this monkey-fish-frog had butt sex with that monkey, and that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey... and that made you!
Ms. Garrison: All right, kids, it is now my job to teach you the theory of evolution. Now I, for one, think evolution is a bunch of *bullcrap*! But I've been told I have to teach it to you anyway. It was thought up by Charles Darwin and it goes something like this:
In the beginning, we were all fish. Okay? Swimming around in the water. And then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby, and the retard baby was different, so it got to live. So Retard Fish goes on to make more retard babies, and then one day, a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its mutant fish hands... and it had butt sex with a squirrel or something and made this...
[she points to a prehistoric mammal rodent]
Ms. Garrison:
So there you go! You're the retarded offspring of five monkeys having butt sex with a fish-squirrel! Congratulations!
What's sad is I think this is the perception a lot of people have about evolution. It amazes me how many people (both educated and not) think it's a completely crack-pot theory. I don't expect everyone to believe it, but a basic understanding of it shouldn't be so hard to get.
In an effort to conform with internet communication standards, please note that the above comment is 100% biased opinion
It's plainly obvious that Darwin or Lamark or Intelligent design all miss the mark.
There is enough paradigm change evidence to warrant a different theory.
Careful analysis of real data shows that there are other factors that Darwin can't explain.
For example, the decline of the mammoth on a particular island in the Bering Sea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island, showed that the mammoths 'evolved' to smaller and smaller sizes, until they were dwarf mammoths. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth
So in effect, a force of nature, had influence upon the evolution of mammoths' physical size to compensate for the size of the island (previously connected to the mainland), and evolved to be able to survive, holistically, on the vegetation on that island.
There is other evidence that is currently in dispute, that the Indonesian human remains found on one island are diminutive and current scientific evidence shows that the natural human form was due to dwarfism, due to the limitations of the natural abundance of resources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis
All this points out that there is more than 'survival of the fittest' or for that matter more than Lamark's concept of environment deciding that shape and form of lifeforms. - ummm... Giraffes have long necks so they can eats the leaves at tops of trees...
So, in my opinion, there is another theory about to surface. Conceptually, it would need to include a force of nature that determines the final (though progressive) outcome of all lifeforms.
Can you imagine? That some currently unknown factor, that I attribute to a specific criteria of 'nature', actually affects the evolution of lifeforms?
So a clear thinker would see that 'nature' (whatever aspect of that), has a direct influence on 'evolution' as we know it.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
From my perspective, it seems Origin of Life theories are excluded from evolution because they are devastating to materialism. The problems with any naturalistic Origin of Life are very serious. There are so many chicken-or-egg problems as to strain credulity. From cell walls, to genetic codes, to metabolism. The minimal complexity and interworking systems needed for life is just too much for naturalism.
Naturalistic Origin of Life theories come down to a faith commitment to naturalism.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
and they say that science isn't a religion. If you spread your belief in a theory, the theory of evolution, and you do so with the zeal of those in other religions, and you think your way is the only right persepective, you got yourself a religion... the religion of science and athiesm has started growing lately, and will probably continue to do so in the future. It's probably just a matter of time before scientist start asking for money to support their religion... Actually, that probably won't happen since they already take money through other methods that steal from the tax payor's coffers... If it looks like a religion, smells like a religion, tastes like a religion, by golly, it might just be a religion.
It's not on you to argue against this proposition, rationally or otherwise. The burden of proof is on the cdesign proponentsists to rationally argue for it.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
"One of the greatest is the fact that reputable biology programs will accept, much less graduate, Ph.D. students who express the slightest doubt about evolution. For this reason, it's simply not possible for honest Christians to obtain respectable versions of the credentials you recommend."
I'd like to see some support for this "fact". I have personal knowledge that it's bullshit, and I'd like to see you support your claim or admit you can't.
I expected this thread to be full of calm, collected reasoning, and was not disappointed!
To believe the Earth is only around 6,000 years old shows such an extreme ignorance of science and lack of respect for the processes of science that to then expect them to somehow accept the science of evolution would be optimistic to the point of folly.
And, while an Earth of only around 6,000 years old would not disprove evolution, it would *definitely* contradict an enormous swath of observation, much of which informs our understanding of evolution. Not the least of which being fossilized remains from hundreds of millions of years ago (something that would presumably be somewhat less abundant on a 6,000 year old planet).
The question was not whether the theory of gravity is a theory, but whether you refer to it as such.
So, when discussing "gravity" do you ALWAYS say "theory of gravity"?
You do not (don't claim you do, please, that would be insulting) so why not? The answer you give for your failure to use "theory" when discussing gravity is the same answer that we would give for our decision not to use "theory" in front of evolution.
"Troll" is not Latin for "I disagree with you".
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Because we want a good society to live in for ourselves and our children. A large part of living in a sustainable and happy culture is understanding the world around us. That means a good portion of us should be scientists, doctors, and engineers. You have to teach science to kids from an early age if you want to end up lots of scientists, doctors, and engineers. You can't arbitrarily leave out the basis (evolution) for an entire branch of science (biology) just because some people say it doesn't agree with some book written a very long time ago.
Of course in my opinion the BEST way to combat this sort of ignorance is to teach the scientific method to kids in jr high or high school. We spend all of our time in "science" classes teaching the information that we have gotten by using the scientific method. We should teach everyone what the scientific method is and why it works really well as a tool for understanding the universe. After all the scientific method is really the foundation of modernity.
-- QED
The simple reason may be that trusting your gut feeling takes less energy ('hurts less') than using your brain.
Deep-crust explorer encounters heat-extremophile rock-eating bacteria believed to be Man's earliest ancestor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCgHHyJQPFM
Aging and death and sex are all an early part of evolution.
Amoebas and single celled organisms just split. I a very real sense, the first amoeba is still alive today. If a single cell ever gets damaged, it might ask a neighboring cell for help. They could share some genetic data (or whatever else might be needed) and the good cell could help repair the broken one. This is really dangerous for the good cell as it might become damaged in the process.
Linear reproduction does not lend itself to the sharing of information.
So, in order to share information, and hence protect the species as a whole, this willingness to share information MUST BE FORCED.
If every organism was hardwired to die, they would definitely have incentive to share genetic information before their time was up. So in reality the advent of death caused the need for sex.
Without DEATH there would be no need for SEX.
This has always been one of my favorite evolutionary rants.
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
The parent post is currently moderated -1, Troll. That doesn't seem quite fair to me. It is true that the post has drawn several responses, but I don't think it was written with cynical intent. It strikes me as an expression of a genuinely held point of view. The post expresses several self-flattering delusions - the assumptions that opponents are unfamiliar with the bible or the arguments of creationists - but does not seem egregious.
Now if you want to mod him -1, misuse of "forensic", I'm with you all the way.
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
IMO, this is how the average dissenter (for lack of a better word) sees the situation:
SCIENTIST: I am a scientist. What I discover, you will learn.
AVERAGE JOE: What if I disagree with your results?
SCIENTIST: You can't disagree meaningfully unless you're also a scientist.
AVERAGE JOE: OK, how do I become a scientist?
SCIENTIST: You must first learn everything I know.
AVERAGE JOE: I don't have time or the money for that.
SCIENTIST: It's the only way.
AVERAGE JOE: If I do, at what point do I get to question the theories I think are BS? Aren't people fired for not being pro-evolution?
SCIENTIST: They aren't scientists!
AVERAGE JOE: So in order to be a scientist, I have to agree with you. But once I agree with you, I'm allowed to disagree with you.
SCIENTIST: That's not what I was trying to convey --
AVERAGE JOE: Forget it. You're just trying to tell me what to think about everything. I'll just wait until someone proves you wrong. You scientists are always correcting yourselves, anyway.
***
I'm not saying that the dissenter is right, but based on my interactions with various people, I think this is a snapshot of the mindset. I also think the above is a snapshot of a certain type of PhD. The pro-science case would certainly be helped if certain arrogant voices didn't pipe up so often.
Genesis has two distinct creation stories:
http://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/2cs.htm
Which one should be taken literally?
Yes on the subject, no on the author: this article was written by Steven Jay Gould in "The Flamingo's Smile", if I'm remembering correctly. I don't have a copy at work and I can't remember the name of the guy who wrote the original essay, but Gould said the man thought it'd be the most monumental book of the century, since it would remove all dispute between evolutionists and creationists, and was so depressed when the book was *completely* ignored that he died soon thereafter. It was ignored because, as you say, evolutionists thought it was stupid, creationists thought it was deeply unsettling, and everyone universally came to the conclusion that if you took the book's idea to its logical extreme, the universe might have been created 15 minutes ago and us with our memories pre-created, and nobody would be able to tell. (Which, by the way, isn't actually different than what most young-earth creationists believe.)
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The thing that annoys me is when articles in the press or TV programmes refer to how parts of animals or plants were 'designed' by evolution. As if Evolution sat back at some point and thought "hmmm... if i want some animals to end up flying, i could use their upper limbs and change them into wings." I think mis-representations like this have a lot to answer for - the whole point of evolution is that design never comes into it, in fact it's a process about as far away from design as it's possible to get. A lot of TV programmes, especially, leave you with the impression that evolution is some amazing, intelligent entity capable of thought, rather than just a name we have applied to a completely natural - and essentially random - process.
And it isn't leaving it out, It is letting someone have another opinion whether it is rooted in science, theology or completely made up on the spot. The important thing to remember would be evolution when learning about science which very little of that actually works on it, or when practicing science and again very little hinges on evolution. In fact, you can become a scientist, a proficient one at that, and not even address evolution beyond a grade school telling for some fields.
I really don't see why there can't be both. One person suggested the philosophical side of humans demand absolutes but that would be treating science in the same field as religion. I don't think I couldn't agree more. I'm not anti science or pro-religion. I just don't really understand why it must be all or nothing with most people. To listen and read the discussions over it, you would think it was to religions arguing over which one is correct. For some this might be more true then not, but I don't think it really is the case except it is being argued in that manor.
See "Code of the Lifemaker", an SF book by James P. Hogan. You can read it for free here. Just read the prologue - it makes the point very, very well the difference between the origin of life and its subsequent evolution.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Well, if that's what PZ Myers had to say, why on earth do you bother to read him or her? That is an absurd contention.
Evolution, meaning the process by which one species arises from another, is a theory in the technical sense. That means that it is a widely understood mechanism supported by empirical observations that makes useful empirical predictions. It is possible to actually observe evolution in progress in organisms that reproduce quickly, like bacteria.
Proposed scientific mechanisms for the origin of life are conjectures. There is no firm evidence to favour one over another and nobody has ever succeeded in creating life by one of the conjectured mechanisms. People cannot even agree whether life began as DNA, RNA, clay, or entered the solar system from space. It is true that people tend to imagine mechanisms, such as clay catalysts, that "have an evolutionary flavour" or are analogous to evolution in that they propose some sort of progression in complexity, from simple non-life through more complicated non-life to - ta da! - life. But so what? If we can't support any of the conjectures with evidence, it doesn't matter how "evolutionary" they are. The correct mechanism could be one we have not imagined.
I am not claiming that there is anything mystical about the problem, or even that we have not already stumbled across the correct conjecture. It's just that whatever happened, happened a long time ago and has left little evidence behind.
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
Obviously God, due to his being omniscient and all that, remembered to bring a flashlight. And batteries, lots of batteries.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
The distinction is used because there is indeed variation. Making something preexisting bigger or smaller is not the big deal. Bringing out preexisting, unexpressed genes isn't a big deal.
Unique body plans which require new useful working equipment and information is the big deal. So the argument is that there isn't a basis for the extrapolation. Not "it works over the short-term not the long-term." That's not the argument.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
If you want to have a logical, rational discussion about evolution, quit insulting Christians to start and finish your comments. God may or may not have used evolution to create humans. He doesn't give us a detailed account of what process He used.
Funny how the supposed thinking, scientific community act like the "religious nuts" that they deride. In science, you let the information speak for itself. If there are holes in the data, you admit it! Then leave it alone until you find more information to fill those gaps. What we supposedly *know* in science changes every day as new information comes to light. You defeat your own arguments by acting as if what we know today cannot possibly be changed. Not to mention you shut down the very essence of scientific discovery...skepticism.
If God chose to use evolution...so be it. If he decided to create the world 6,000 years (as we know them today) ago and build it in an instant complete with a history for us to discover...so be it. That is His decision, not mine.
Yes, I am a Christian. So? Do I believe in evolution? Some. Despite the current evidence, I still have not seen enough to say that is how humans were certainly created. However, it is is the process of how we were created, does that shatter my Christian beliefs? No. Why should it? God did not say it was a sin to discover more about the universe He created.
For those of you who do not believe that there is a God and a hereafter, why do you care about evolution? In less than a blink of an cosmic eye, you will be dust and all your works will evaporate any way.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Fact" versus "Theory" is just an endless word-game. The definitions are not precise enough to settle sticky debates. The important point is that the evidence for evo is very strong and the evidence for intelligent design is very weak. Binary classifications just get in the way of what's really the issue. Enough word-games.
Table-ized A.I.
But what evidence does anyone have to establish that such a thing as a soul exists? I believe that ultimately, the notion that souls exist are due only to some sort of selfish arrogance or magical thinking that somehow we (and possibly other animals) have an existence that transcends the plane of corporeal existence. If the evidence amounts to unsubstantiated, anecdotal "ghost stories" and the belief that we're so special that somehow there must be more to our fleeting existence, I can only say "dream on".
The more cold reality of the situation is that organisms are biochemical machines. We're very complex, fantastic machines. We have such a capacity to assimilate our own experiences and knowledge of the abstract that we set ourselves as the bar that any other machine or creature must be able to clear in order to be considered to possess higher intelligence. But in the end, it's a matter of degree. Is it so hard to fathom that there could be organisms or even computers somewhere that might be so far superior to our level intelligence that we would compare to them as amoeba compare to us. Researchers are able to identify more and more of our cognitive limitations. What are consciousness and self-awareness if not merely cognitive abilities? What sort of things might we be missing out on as a result of our limitations? Does it ultimately matter if we just shut-down and cease to function at some point like any other machine or organism when they are either damaged beyond repair or just wear-out from use?
I don't think it diminishes my existence in the least to view myself as a machine that came into existence, function largely as intended (at least from what I understand my purpose to be), and will eventually have some critical component fail and relegate me to the biological scrap heap for salvage. If anything, that view makes me even more determined to pursue a higher quality of experience and such, since I'm fairly certain I need to make the most of my existence here and now, as opposed to sacrificing such things and merely building to something nebulous that may or may not allow my existence to continue beyond the collapse of my current state. I chose to cherish the bird in hand.
Women are still considered "items" *owned* by men in many countries of the world. Most of these countries tend to have some sort of "fundamentalist religious system". For example, Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan. India and Bangladesh is another example where corruption and the cast system allow people (especially women and children) to be treated as property. Child labour?
Slavery exists *today*. It only almost disappeared in the developed world, but it still exists even there. Underground. See the sex trade trafficking of women.
Religious dogma and irrationality will take even longer. Let's hope we have enough time before that dogma kills all of us - see nuclear weapons in hands of these fanatics, be it 'christian', 'islamic' or 'jewish'.
-- Thomas Jefferson
You can't take the sky from me...
Even the simplest laws of physics - gravity, force etc.. - had to be written by someone.
Why?
Last post!
(snip)
The problem with the books on evolution I have read is that they assume evolution is true, and then fit the pieces into that assumption. This is different from books on the other branches of science, which start with the basic experiments, and then introduce the theory to explain them.
No, this is exactly how science works. You do the ground work. The research. You figure out the basics, and then you build upon that. When a geologist does his research he builds upon existing and peer-reviewed research that has been shown to be supported by all known facts. Evolution is exactly the same as any other scientific field. The difference is in your head. It is wishful thinking on your part.
I think the old saying about teaching pigs to sing applies here. Creationists are typically exceptionally credulous and gullible. They've been taught that if you read something in a particular book, it must be true. They generally will say if they're a fool as a result of believing such things on faith, that it's not their fault, that someone else lied-to and betrayed them. They are NOT personally accountable for their lives, they trust that church leadership and scripture translators are acting in their own best interests and utilize recursive arguments that use the scriptures to describe a divine being that keeps the scriptures pure and infallible.
You obviously understand, as do I, that science makes no such promises. Every statement of theory that a scientist makes publicly is subject to scrutiny, there are no gods, there is no gospel. There is also no room for willful ignorance; every individual is held accountable for understanding and being critical of theories, and nobody is let off the hook for being ignorant and/or believing what was printed in a research paper or book without further scrutiny. There is simply no, "I am a victim, I was misled (by someone else)," in science; there is only, "If you believed that 'junk science' at face value & didn't scrutinize it sufficiently, it turned out to be wrong, AND you happened to base your beliefs on the subject matter on it & wound-up looking foolish, you fail at the scientific process." The only victims in the scientific world are those of their own stupidity if they fail in their due diligence of analysis.
Or...how about the fact that in a symmetric normal distribution, the median and the mean are theoretically the same, and in practice they are, with good sampling, usually DAMN close. So fuck off. For practical concerns, his statement still works.
What worries me the most is that the "God is behind it" argument can be used to explain anything, while it doesn't really help us live our lives.
Instead of trying to prove or disprove God, people should concentrate on trying to understand what we have around us so that we can better interact with it, and that's what I think Science tries to.
By contrast, Intelligent Design, Creationism and such just concentrate on disproving what Science comes up with so to prove that "God is behind it".
If there was ever a God, He certainly should expect us to walk on our own feet someday instead of keeping asking for His Holy help.
This NCSE session sounds like a good step onto that direction as an enlightenment of how life is supposed to work when exposed to environmental challenges.
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
No don't start the literal bible argument.
Who wrote the bible? People. Who used transcribed the bible before the printing press? People. Who translated the bible? People. Who's created the languages the bible is written in? People. Who interprets the bible? People.
Now are all the people involved in this process infallible and have they all perfectly maintained the message of god, an omnipotent and omniscient being.
Yes it might say that the days are literal but perhaps nuances have been lost or added through its tranlation. And what exactly is day? Is it one revolution of the earth. Is it 24 hours? then how longs an hour? I think you get the drift.
Remember this is an omnipotent being people. He can do anything he wants. Period. No limitations. If he wants to turn you into a pink and purple platypus with a polka dots, no prob.
Sorry, I was being absurd. You might have missed the emoticon at the end of that first line?
-Cheers
No problem. Will answer when I get back from lunch. Busy day....
Thx for responding love non-trolls....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
You're giving these people too much credit. It is true most people don't know what the theory of evolution is. It is also true that while a lot of people claim to be of a given Judeo-christian-islamic faith, most of those people don't know what the doctrine of their church is and have not read the central religious works of their faith, or even the history of their own religion.
Really the situation is that most people are ignorant in many ways and don't know what the theory of evolution is or how it relates to the religion with which they identify. They just react badly when confronted with their own ignorance and rather than learning they get angry and try to stop others from learning and making them look even more ignorant by comparison.
When I read the title I thought, "it's too late for me, I've already migrated to Thunderbird".
I understand the universe to be made of matter and energy and the laws that govern them. I believe in cause and effect. I do not think matter and energy just "came to be" one day... I think they always existed, and are part of God. I believe that matter and energy came together using the laws of the universe to form life (perhaps with the addition of other forces we don't fully understand). God encompasses this entire framework. I don't believe it happened in a split second, but I also don't believe it would have happened without Him (aka, without matter, energy, laws, etc). I believe it happened how it was supposed to, in the perfect manner, in perhaps the ONLY manner, and I don't pretend to hold exclusive knowledge to that process.
My own quote: "We are nothing, but our will to survive." I look at the world, and through all the chaos and beauty, the perfection and the unexplained, the similarity coupled perfectly with diversity, I see one common theme, one common direction everything moves in - survival. We are simply a combination of energy and matter, with our will to survive. Those three things make us what we are, and I see no contradiction in that between science and God (or, as some like to call Him, Energy, or Nature, or Buda, or Alah, or the Universe... anything that encompasses all that is).
Some might say "you're reducing him to components, to a purposeless, thoughtless entity". Really? I have will, and purpose, and thought, yet I am not all that is... I can only assume that if God is everything I am and more, than he too has will, purpose, thought... He just does way more with it than I could ever accomplish.
People like to think of themselves as God... the be-all, end-all. But I can't see how any rational person can think that way when they look outside, look at the earth, the universe, and realize that as one individual, how insignificant we are in this grand display of ingenuity. We can't even come close to replicating ourselves from scratch... how could we posture to be greater than all that exists?
People who follow science and consider it incompatible with religion, as well as people who are religious and consider it incompatible with science, simply have a view of life that's too limited. The two aren't antithetical; in fact, I think they are perfectly complementary. Just because there are vast numbers of people who understand things in a limited or incorrect sense and thus give off a misrepresented view of that school of thought does not mean that the school of thought itself is invalid. No, I don't take everything in the Bible literally, yes I think there could be errors, misinterpretations, etc... but I also think that on a basic level there are some truths and principals within the Bible that have not only contributed enormously to the successful progression of humanity, but are fundamental to our understanding of life and the universe.
In other words: in everything that is scientific truth, there I also find God.
The RNA world hypothesis is an intriguing explanation for the origin of self-replicating RNAs that could have then spawned early life forms containing DNA. Check The RNA World, edited by Cech, Atkins, and Gesteland, published by Cold Spring Harbor Lab Press. There are 3 editions to choose from. It gets into the nitty-gritty of the hypothesis. I think an intrepid slashdotter could handle it and might get a good deal of pleasure in this book.
"The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"
"My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all."
"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?"
"God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen."
"If we find the answer [the unified theory], it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for we would know the mind of God."
The above quotes are from Stephen Hawking.
To an average joe like me, Hawking makes perfect sense. I sense that extremists from both sides of this debate find some of these statements blasphemous.
I'm an atheist who had the unpleasant misfortunate of growing up in a small super-Christian town outside of Houston, Texas.
In my experience, most people (both children and adults) who are dead-set against evolution don't understand the theory at all. They think it is saying that a monkey can magically and spontaneously turn into a human being. And they scoff at such a notion (as anyone would) and get deeply offended by it (as almost all people would, since almost all people think human beings are inherently superior to all other animals).
All the scientific community needs to do to educate the religious public (and reduce its defensiveness) is to stop portraying evolution as an example of "apes turning into people over time" and instead portray it as "environment killing off individuals who aren't built for survival". That's much less offensive to the average person's sensibilities, and it allows them to open their mind to the concept without automatically rejecting it up front.
Once a person can understand what evolution is, and see countless of examples of it at work in the world, then their mind can begin to open to seeing that humans aren't immune to it, and that it must be true for all living things.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
By gum, you're absolutely right that the authoritarian nightmares of the twentieth century were mostly non-religious. (Not uniformly, though; the Taliban may have been small, but boy, were they scary.) The key difference isn't between religious and non-religious systems, I think, but between different ways of knowing. There's an interesting letter from Richard Dawkins to his daughter, which lays out a foundation for this idea, in that reasoning from evidence is depicted as a good way to know something, while authority, tradition and revelation were bad ways. Authoritarian murderers relied on the strength of their authority--when the people in North Korea were so indoctrinated that they'd rather eat their family members than rebel against the government, that's authority. When Stalin made his wacky decrees because they came to him in a brain cloud, that's revelation. Those aren't good reasons to rely on anything.
Stalin, Mao and their link are no more morally equivalent to your average liberal-democratic secular humanist than a member of the medieval Inquisition is morally equivalent to your average nominally religious member of a Western democracy. The former members of each pair have more in common with each other than either does with the latter set, and it's completely missing the mark to point at secularism as the cause. While religion is the most obvious embodiment of ways of knowing that lead to authoritarianism, it's hardly the only road that leads there.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Most mutations cause loss of function. If that creates a detrimental situation, the resulting organism suffers a corresponding loss of fitness. This can be as blatant as death or loss of fertility, or as subtle as reduced fecundity, shortened lifespan or diminished efficiency in the given environment.
When the fitness is reduced, over time, that lineage is selected against.
If for some reason the mutation does not result in reduced fitness, there's no selective pressure against that variant, and without the need to preserve a specific gene sequence, it degrades over time.
If humans became exposed to an easy source of vitamin C, then genes producing a natural vitamin C would lose the maintainence that comes from positive selective pressure. Over time the gene would degrade, but with cheaply available dietary substitutes, there would be no corresponding loss of fitness and eventually the majority of the population would lack a functional vitamin C gene.
If the circumstances changed and vitamin C production became essential because it was no longer available in our diet, then the selective pressure would return and those without the functional variant would experience reduced fitness whereas those who, by chance, retained a functional copy would experience a selective advantage. Eventually the gene would reassert itself in the population.
Basically: Genes cost energy, in terms of maintainence. If there's no need to pay the energy cost, entropy takes over and they degenerate.
You're describing Stephen Jay Gould's non-overlapping magisteria. Although it sounds really darn cool (ten syllables, dude!), it's a bit of a pipe dream. If you want to complain about people not keeping their magisteria distinct, please start with the creationists. People who claim that there's no conflict between science and religion are either unforgivably ignorant of the long history religion has of making testable claims about the material world, or are trying to make excuses for what quite frankly looks like a pretty useless way of knowing things.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Have you ever read about the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints? De facto enslavement of women, right in the United States (and a bit of Canada). The cult's been mostly disbanded after its leader, Warren Jeffs, was arrested, but it's not just the wacky foreigners that do it.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
On the other hand, any gene conserved enough to appear all over a lineage will bear mutations which, when fed to a phylogenetics algorithm, replicate the same tree you get from any other gene to within a very, very high degree of similarity. Go find a set of genes and sequence them; it's a perfectly feasible experiment. (It's been done with plenty of extant genes.)
Have you actually looked into this yourself, or are you just making stuff up? Please point to research published, for instance, in PLoS Biology by someone attached to a social science department. Heck, since you've asserted that most researchers in evolutionary biology work in social science departments, find five articles. It shouldn't be hard. (I'm leaning more towards the idea that you're just making stuff up.)
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I asked for evidence of it happening, not a regurgitated and still unsupported opinion.
Restating your ignorance regarding the PhD process and assumptions you make based on how it occurs is not proof, it's a restatement of an ignorant opinion.
I think the Nazis were scary, as was the Spanish Inquisition, even though I don't personally live in fear of either of them. How was my meaning not obvious?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca