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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.
(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.
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.
No, you would think that he would not have learned that...with 90% certainty.
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.
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)
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?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
While this link more or less covers these points I'll summarize as it's a lot to slog through. The fossil record is sorted based on time. Radiological dating coupled with clear evolutionary progress as you look at progressively higher layers proves this. If much of the life on Earth died in a flood then you'd expect to see sorting based on density, size and swimming ability with the metal and stone tools of the time at the bottom and a spectrum of animals ranging from big slow creatures that couldn't make it to higher ground and live longer or swim very well on top of the tools and birds, bats and things that can swim for a long time at the top. Considering that the remains of tools are all well above the likes of T-Rex skeletons this is clearly not the case.
The Grand Canyon is pretty much a poster-child for modern geological theories. It's layering is not consistent with a rapid flood and the canyon its self is best explained by the long slow process of erosion by river. I could probably find some detailed studies if you'd like. the mitochondrial DNA studies performed at Berkeley in 1987 [1] I don't know where you're getting that 6000 years figure. The study you cite puts her as living approximately 200000 years ago and it's a bit more complex than "our common female ancestor". I'm tired and it's three am so here's a link...
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html
If you have more questions about this part I'll gladly answer them when it's daytime. and the existence of comets Seriously? WTF...
What about comets causes problems for you. Tell me and I'll do my best to clear up any misunderstandings you may have.
Also, I've noticed you seem to have a problem common to many Creationists, you conflate geological evolution, astronomy, abiogenisis and biological evolution. Geological evolution is, as the name suggests about the changing of our planet over time and includes stuff like erosion, desertification and plate tectonics. Astronomy is the study of the stars and can include stuff like the big bang and the formation of our solar system.Abiogenisis is the idea that life originated from non-life due to the chemical conditions present on Earth at the time. Biological evolution is what you seem to want to debate and it's all about the adaptation of animals over subsequent generations due to natural selection. Even if one is disproved it doesn't necessarily invalidate the others because they're all separate theories with their own evidence and implications. The fact that they all tend to support each other where they overlap just adds credence to them all.
Talk more when it's day
-David
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.
First, you really should link to the articles in question, as that would be the polite thing to do: Cann | Gibbons (pdf).
Second, it is obvious that you have chosen a belief system and grasp at any evidence to support it, blatantly disregarding all other evidence. A google of those papers make them look to be two "classics" that creationists refer to again and again. The youngest is over 10 years old. Where are the more recent Science/Nature papers that confirm the conclusions of these papers? They don't exist.
Here is an acid test for good research: Does it stand the test of time? Is the field explosive in the scientific field 10 years later? Some examples of paradigm shifting fields are stem cells, apoptosis, and RNA catalysis. The papers you cite do not measure up to these standards and so are highly suspect. Good science gets confirmed by other scientists and not by conjecture or preachers who thumpin bibles. Where are the papers confirming the 6500 year old mitochondrial clock or have recent advances shown problems with the previous model? Do the research yourself if you are objective like you think you are--or you can remain blinded by your belief system. But if you wish to remain blinded by your belief system, don't burden others with your belief system like you are doing here.
When uninformed people have opinions on science that smell of belief and bias, my suggestion to them is to go spend five to seven years to get a PhD in a field of natural science. Don't cop-out and pick some religious school where you end up with a thesis full of bible quotes. Find a real state-run university without any allegiance to any religion. Do actual research out in the field (dig bones, sequence DNA, dissect plants, count the strata of geological formations, etc.), synthesize the data and write your thesis on what you have discovered. Don't lie and make up data to support your belief system! Even [insert your favorite religious prophet or diety here] wouldn't do that, right? Integrate the comments of your committee and defend your thesis in front of them. Once you have your PhD from the accredited state-run university without any religious affiliation, come back and examine your belief system from the perspective of a trained scientist. Until then, you are simply fooling yourself, discrediting the members of your faith, and annoying the knowledgeable.
Just callin' it like I see it.
> 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.
Perhaps I should try to clarify the point from that perspective?
We humans do *NOT* do it that way. We try to produce large numbers of identical units, be they Pentium processors, copies of Microsoft's Windows OS, white lab mice, or even ears of corn. Essentially we're begging for viral disasters of every sort.
If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on the chickens. We've created vast flocks of chickens with almost identical genes, and they in turn have become hosts for vast infections of bird flu. By creating such vast stocks of viruses, we have greatly increased the chances of the appearance of a very serious human-human form of bird flu. But if not the chickens, there are other horses in the race, and right now I'm skeptical if we're liable to learn the big lessons from the disaster when (not if) it happens. Another thing about Ma Nature is that she's seriously patient.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Let me guess -- are you implying, from Gibbons, that 6500 years ago there was a mere one human woman on the entire planet, from whom everyone alive is descended? And I guess we all know her name...
Because the "Mitochondrial Eve" theory does not identify a purported woman, the only one on the planet, from which everyone who has ever lived descended. Rather it identifies the one woman that everyone alive today is descended from, and who was only one of many alive then, but the only one whose descendants who are alive now. And Gibbons' paper said that this person lived 6500, rather than 100,000, years ago (as described in Sykes' "The Seven Daughters of Eve").
But in her day, there was in turn a common ancestor that everyone alive then was descended from, some thousands of years in the past. And so on, nearly ad infinitum. But alas, we will never be able to identify the time of existence of any of those Eves without analyzing DNA samples from people back then.
Of course logically there must have been that one ultimate Mitochondrial Eve, but assuming she was the product of evolution, it requires arbitrarily defining her as "human" and all of her ancestors as not.
The question is not whether evolution is possible (given enough time and luck, anything is possible), but whether it actually happened.
You're trying to put it in terms like the infinitesimal but non-zero "possibility" of an apple suspending itself mid-air by some sheer random alignment of atoms. But scientific theories such as evolution don't deal with possibilities like that. And they're not formulated as descriptions of phenomena which are theoretically possible but have never been observed. Rather they are formulated as explanations of things which have happened. The phenomenon of evolution has been irrefutably observed as happening, and the theory adequately explains how.
I wonder, how many of your professors have presented theories as fact?
That, to me, is a scary thought. If all scientists believed theory to be fact, which would be dogmatic, there would be no more need at attempts in disproving theory. I believe that would make the scientific establishment's principles akin to the Catholic Church.
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.
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.
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?
I'm just an ordinary electrial engineer. That makes me slightly more educated than the man on the street and far less educated than the average grad student in the life sciences. Short of going back to college a PhD, I read books to educate myself. Asking for good books or other information on evolution hardly counts as "burdening others with your belief system like you are doing here." If I am wrong, it is because I am the victim of bad science, not because I am grasping at any evidence to support my belief system. My belief system does not require me to believe in evolution at all. I am perfectly comfortable with God existing outside the physical universe and playing no part in the natural evolutionary process that produced us. I have read enough to conclude that this is not the case, but maybe the stuff I have read is junk science.
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. For example, any description of relativity begins with important observed facts, like the null result of the Mitchelson-Morley experiment or the reduced rate of decay of particles traveling at relativistic velocities. Only then do they introduce the theory to explain those facts. Every explanation of evolution I have read basically says, "We evolved from lower live forms, and here is how the facts fit into that assumption," which is exactly the opposite approach. This is not an argument against evolution; it is an argument against the way it is presented.
I cited four examples for creation evidence off the top of my head, but I have read hundreds more. A Slashdot thread could never go into the level of detail I am looking for, which is why I want a good book or something. One that builds the theory from the ground up, citing experiments/observations along the way. If such a book doesn't exist, someone should write one. It would be a devastating attack against honest creationists.
One can't help but wonder how much of the (undue) credibility that "evolution deniers" are given is down to this simple difference in semantics...
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
I get the feeling that you are being intentionally dishonest. You use anecdotal evidence to "prove" that evolution is somehow different than other fields in science, but this is not the case at all, as anyone even remotely familiar with science would know.
Whether fact or theory is mentioned first, that does not change the way the facts support the theory. Even if it was true what you claim, that evolution is presented differently from relativity (but not from gravity or electricity), this is merely a red herring, because the facts don't become more or less supporting of the theory in question depending on whether they are mentioned before or after. Again a sign that you are grasping for straws. That you have definitely made up your mind already and are only looking to reinforce your own beliefs.
If this had not been the case, you would have looked up the four false claims you made in your other post, and taken the actual facts into account. You did not, so you are either not willing to actually check the claims that you have found on creationist sites, or you are aware that what you posted had already been refuted, which means that you are being intentionally dishonest.
Well, all your four examples were refuted. My guess is that your "hundreds more" would be as well. We've seen them all before, and they are spreading because people desperately want them to be true. But unfortunately for creationists, they are not. They are factually incorrect, based on quotes out of context, misunderstandings, straw men, etc.If you would like to educate yourself, go through your list of "hundreds more" examples, and look them up in this index of creationist claims.
(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 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.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Thank you for this informative comment, I really appreciate it.
I was under the impression that the layering was, in fact, consistent with deposit by a flood followed by tidal pumping and liquefication. I will have to look into this in greater detail. The hydroplate theory, in its full detail, actually accounts for most of the points in article you link to, but not all of them. The points it does not explain are the interesting ones, from my point of view.
The 6000 year figure came from the second study. But as your link points out, even if this were true, it would prove nothing. Another person in this thread pointed out that a later study done in 2000 demonstrates a flaw in the Gibbons study and puts the date back at 171,500 +/- 50,000 years.
Comets crash into things quite often, and should be extinct by now if the solar system is millions of years old. The Oort cloud theory suggest that a cloud of matter 50000 AU away is replenishing our supply, but it doesn't provide a plausible mechanism for launching comets out of the cloud and into the inner solar system (at least, from what I have read about it).
This is a valid point, and one I had not considered until now. I suspect creationists confuse them because their explanation, if true, would account for all four. You are right, though. The independence of these theories from an evolutionary / old universe standpoint does make it harder to refute them. Attempts to disprove biological evolution by referring to astronomy are just sloppy.
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."
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The only place in science for proofs are math and logic.
Theories are the "hows" for the "facts" of the universe. Take gravity as an example. Gravity is a fact (things fall to the Earth, masses attract each other, etc.). The *theory* of gravity is the "this is how it works". In fact, there are multiple theories of gravity *in use this very day*. Both Newton's and Einstein's theories of gravity are used, even though Einstein's is significantly more correct more often. But neither theory has been proven correct because you *can't* prove they are correct. All you can do is show how well they match observation.
As for evolution, we know about the fact of evolution. We've seen it happen in real-time. We've seen it happen in the fossil record. We've instigated and directed it ourselves. That's evolution the fact. Evolution the theory (in fact, just like with gravity, theories) are the details, the "how it happens". Exactly *why* do animals evolve? Just *how* does this happen? These are aspect of the *theory* of evolution which all seek to describe the *fact* of evolution.
Except that religion is a set of supernatural and moral claims. Science, on the other hand, deals with the natural, objective, and pragmatic. Its beliefs are not dogmatic, but instead are testable and falsifiable. And do you really not realize the enormous public benefit that science has given us, such as that computer you typed your message on? I'd say it's well worth taxpayer dollars to support such a useful endeavor. No, I'd have to say that science is pretty much as dissimilar to religion as you can get. They are not at odds with each other, but instead complement each other.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
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
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.
May the Maths Be with you!
Genesis has two distinct creation stories:
http://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/2cs.htm
Which one should be taken literally?
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.
I believe your basic problem is that you're assuming that because there are gaps in our understanding that god must fill those gaps. Even if your points were true, which I'm not going to address as other's have done so adequately, that's still no reason to throw your hands up and say god did it. 3000 years ago people thought thunderbolts were thrown by Zeus, but we keep looking and we found a naturalistic answer that is so much more satisfying than a superstitious non answer. Naturalism works because we can use the understanding gained to create technologies that actually improves our lives. Scratching our heads saying "well gee, I guess god must have done it" never got anyone anywhere.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Please note that it was not 'fanatics' who created nuclear weapons. It was 'rationalists'. As to the relative danger of either group, well, without rationalists creating the nuclear bombs in the first place, you'd not have to worry about 'fanatics' detonating them. I would note, however, that the ONLY people to have ever used nuclear weapons "in the field" were in the US government, and that they had no religious imperative for their use. Also note that those who have murdered the largest numbers of people in history - Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan - all were either non-religious or anti-religious. So the scoreboard shows that you have more to fear from non-religious types than religious ones, statistically speaking. In fact, of the 20 worst losses of human life in history, only ONE had anything to do with religion, and I believe it is either 19th or 20th on the list.
http://xkcd.com/386/
As a Christian, I've been troubled, and even dismayed, by the paucity of actual scientists among writers who question the theory of evolution.
That's what happens when a theory is as well supported by evidence as evolution is. Are you also dismayed by the paucity of physicists who question thermodynamics? Or that of astronomers who question the heliocentric theory?
It would be a waste of time for every researcher in the biological sciences to be familiar with Behe's work. I'm sure you have no idea how specialized science is, and the immense amount of information you have to absorb just to come up with a novel idea to test. There's just no time in the day to test every one of our assumptions.
And yes, we do have assumptions and we rely on them to make sense of our data. When our data doesn't make sense that's when we question our assumptions. So go on and find a way to quantify complexity, and demonstrate that some threshold level of complexity is "irreducible" and we'll start listening.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
When I read the title I thought, "it's too late for me, I've already migrated to Thunderbird".
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