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Darwinism Must Die So Evolution Can Live
Pickens writes "MacArthur fellow Carl Safina, an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University, has an interesting essay in the NYTimes that says that equating evolution with Charles Darwin opened the door for creationism by ignoring 150 years of discoveries, including most of what scientists understand about evolution — Gregor Mendel's patterns of heredity, the discovery of DNA, developmental biology, studies documenting evolution in nature, and evolution's role in medicine and disease. Darwinism implies an ideology adhering to one man's dictates, like Marxism, says Safina. He adds that nobody talks about Newtonism or Einsteinism, and that by making Darwin 'into a sacred fetish misses the essence of his teaching.' By turning Darwin into an 'ism,' scientists created the opening for creationism, with the 'isms' implying equivalence. 'By propounding "Darwinism," even scientists and science writers perpetuate an impression that evolution is about one man, one book, one theory,' writes Safina. '"Darwinism" implies that biological scientists "believe in" Darwin's "theory." It's as if, since 1860, scientists have just ditto-headed Darwin rather than challenging and testing his ideas, or adding vast new knowledge.'"
This is why most biologist refer to Darwins theory plus all the addition thoughts of the last 150 year as neodarwinism
Darwins basic idea still stands so it doesn't seem illogical to use his name for the theory
That is, as the Brits say, bollocks.
The issue is that this ignorant view may be perpetuated in America. I have never heard anyone in Europe utter such crap.
Let us pray that Obama can wipe public references to deities into oblivion.
I'm sick of pandering to the ill-educated buffoons who want to drag civilisation kicking and screaming back into the dark ages.
Darwin wasn't utterly and completely right first time out of the bag. So what?
His discoveries have been validated, refined, added-to, improved in ways he could never have predicted.
Again, so what?
Darwin laid the bedrock, the foundation, upon which stands much of modern science, let alone biology.
And until you can give me a reason why we should metaphorically bury the giants upon who's shoulders we collectively stand, I will resist this utterly foolish idea.
I sit here in this cafe, drinking a latte and typing on my laptop computer. Both the latte and the PC are hot, one from being prepared that way, the other as a result of internal processes. Both are hot as I have defined them.
Does the fact that one requires an external entity to prepare it make it any less hot than the one that becomes hot of its own accord?
Darwin was an observer. He made a logical conclusion from what he saw.
Darwin didn't have a true theory because the idea he had had no predictive power and little explanatory power, therefore was inherently untestable and not able to be used to answer questions. He wasn't aware of DNA, genes or chromosomes.
Evolution was just an observation and was only considered radical because no one had raised the question.
Newtonian physics/mechanics is in common usage and although there's no 'Einstienian", there is the term 'relativistic' applied to the branch of physics he's most famous for
Too bad buddy, I think it's too late for science, just like it is for computers I'm sorry to say. Man needs religion evidently, even the atheists need it so they make one up out of whatever is their daily work.
The only people who go on and on ad nauseum about "Darwinism", as if it were the be-all and end-all of Evolutionary Theory, are the Creationists.
The reason no-one talks about "Newtonism" or "Eisteinism" is because neither of those things threaten the basis behind the belief systems of a significant chunk of the planet (and therefore the power weilded by the people behind them). Why waste time attacking something you couldn't care less about ?
I could be hanging out with the wrong scientists, but I rarely hear anyone describe what they work on as "Darwinism". There are "evolutionary biologists", who research evolution, not Darwinism. The well-accepted name for the process is evolution, and as far as I can tell nobody calls the idea Darwinism, though Darwin is widely credited as having had an important early role in its development.
We do actually speak of Newtonian mechanics, for what it's worth. Probably more than anyone in science actually speaks of Darwinian evolution. So we've sort of already done what this guy is asking for, it seems?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I don't think many popular science writers, or whoever it is that shapes the public understanding of scientific issues, have read, let alone endorse, The Origin of Species. It is truer that most of them do endorse the so-called Modern Synthesis, a synthesis between evolution-theoretic ideas and genetics, which cristallised around the mid-40s and is, arguably, not the last word in the theory of evolution. But I don't see how having Darwin's name associated -in all justice- to the Modern Synthesis cluster is any more harmful to the theory than having Einstein's name associated -in all justice- to the theory of relativity.
On the other hand, from TFA:
"Using phrases like "Darwinian selection" or "Darwinian evolution" implies there must be another kind of evolution at work, a process that can be described with another adjective. For instance, "Newtonian physics" distinguishes the mechanical physics Newton explored from subatomic quantum physics. So "Darwinian evolution" raises a question: What's the other evolution?
Into the breach: intelligent design."
Of course. This is just as it should be. Intelligent design is a powerful source of evolution. Or how does the writer think Airbuses emerged from the Wright brothers' prototype? The passage I just quoted implies that there is no legitimate evolution that is not Darwinian. This is plain silly.
Darwin didn't have a true theory because the idea he had had no predictive power and little explanatory power, therefore was inherently untestable and not able to be used to answer questions. He wasn't aware of DNA, genes or chromosomes.
Arguably his hypotheseses were quite testable - just not by the science and technology of the time.
Also, not understanding the underlying mechanics of a system does not automatically invalidate a theory explaining them. Exhibit A: Gravity.
This is an issue of semantics, and of marketing strategy. A rose by any other name ... still evolved from its Rosoideae anscestors in the wild fields of Asia.
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
That's the main mistake here.
Basicly this says that we must stop treating evolution as a theory and instead embrace it as truth. Once again Sherlock is stunned silent.
I am the lawn!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but these days the term "Darwinism" refers to a 19th century understanding of evolution, specifically to distinguish it from modern evolutionary theory.
The only people who use "Darwinism" to mean "theory of evolution" are creationists.
sic transit gloria mundi
Try this Google search, and click the result to read the story in a single page without registering.
Or, since registration requirements are lame, read it here:
Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live
By CARL SAFINA
Published: February 9, 2009
"You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching," Robert Darwin told his son, "and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family." Yet the feckless boy is everywhere. Charles Darwin gets so much credit, we can't distinguish evolution from him.
Equating evolution with Charles Darwin ignores 150 years of discoveries, including most of what scientists understand about evolution. Such as: Gregor Mendel's patterns of heredity (which gave Darwin's idea of natural selection a mechanism -- genetics -- by which it could work); the discovery of DNA (which gave genetics a mechanism and lets us see evolutionary lineages); developmental biology (which gives DNA a mechanism); studies documenting evolution in nature (which converted the hypothetical to observable fact); evolution's role in medicine and disease (bringing immediate relevance to the topic); and more.
By propounding "Darwinism," even scientists and science writers perpetuate an impression that evolution is about one man, one book, one "theory." The ninth-century Buddhist master Lin Chi said, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." The point is that making a master teacher into a sacred fetish misses the essence of his teaching. So let us now kill Darwin.
That all life is related by common ancestry, and that populations change form over time, are the broad strokes and fine brushwork of evolution. But Darwin was late to the party. His grandfather, and others, believed new species evolved. Farmers and fanciers continually created new plant and animal varieties by selecting who survived to breed, thus handing Charles Darwin an idea. All Darwin perceived was that selection must work in nature, too.
In 1859, Darwin's perception and evidence became "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life." Few realize he published 8 books before and 10 books after "Origin." He wrote seminal books on orchids, insects, barnacles and corals. He figured out how atolls form, and why they're tropical.
Credit Darwin's towering genius. No mind ran so freely, so widely or so freshly over the hills and vales of existence. But there's a limit to how much credit is reasonable. Parking evolution with Charles Darwin overlooks the limits of his time and all subsequent progress.
Science was primitive in Darwin's day. Ships had no engines. Not until 1842, six years after Darwin's Beagle voyage, did Richard Owen coin the term "dinosaur." Darwin was an adult before scientists began debating whether germs caused disease and whether physicians should clean their instruments. In 1850s London, John Snow fought cholera unaware that bacteria caused it. Not until 1857 did Johann Carl Fuhlrott and Hermann Schaaffhausen announce that unusual bones from the Neander Valley in Germany were perhaps remains of a very old human race. In 1860 Louis Pasteur performed experiments that eventually disproved "spontaneous generation," the idea that life continually arose from nonliving things.
Science has marched on. But evolution can seem uniquely stuck on its founder. We don't call astronomy Copernicism, nor gravity Newtonism. "Darwinism" implies an ideology adhering to one man's dictates, like Marxism. And "isms" (capitalism, Catholicism, racism) are not science. "Darwinism" implies that biological scientists "believe in" Darwin's "theory." It's as if, since 1860, scientists have just ditto-headed Darwin rather than challenging and testing his ideas, or adding vast new knowledge.
Using phrases like "Darwinian selection" or "Darwinian ev
A quite skim over the article. It's rubbish. That Darwin distracts from all the others who have helped strengthen our understanding of how the variety of life on the planet came to be, I'll accept that.
That 'Darwinism' must die so people can understand evolution? That's just bollocks.
Education must simply improve, and ignorance should never be tolerated.
This is a good idea. Just ask any proponent of creati...err...intelligent design.
... Or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people.
A lot of other people have torn to pieces the idea that we really call it "Darwinism" in meaningful discourse. They're pretty right. Our understanding of evolution has, err, evolved, over the years since he first propounded his theory.
That said, he laid the foundations for evolutionary biology, and deserves to leave his name in history a bit. If you've never read The Origin of Species, give it a shot. It's a solid work, and quite accessible. His application of the scientific method should be a case study for all scientists.
For any interested, there's a pretty good article about him over at the International Herald Tribune at the moment.
Darwin did make predictions based on his observations. He observed a flower with an extremely long distance to it's store of nectar, up to a metre if I recall. He predicted a wierd kind of insect (maybe a moth) that must have a massive, metre long tongue to drink the nectar as an example of the two organisms evolving together. The moth was observed and catalogued about 20 years later if I remember right.
I thought 'Darwinism' was the term you used when playing 'Darwinia'? Maybe that's why I failed biology 101...
Drawanism has same relationship with Evolution what Dawkinism has got with Atheism. Idea is far older than these two people . their contribution is that they bring the debate to mainstream audience . No small achievement by any yardstick.Problem is that some people identify more with the champion than the cause . does that hurt the cause and prevent us from having a healthy debate ? Yes . but does it give others to discredit the champion . NO . .Popular yes but scientific ? Not completely
TFA is another popular science article
somethings are best left unsaid , I am one of those things
Any theory that does not provide a method to falsify and validate its claims is a useless theory.
Example; if someone said a watermelon is blue on the inside, but turns red when you cut it open, how could you prove them wrong? How could they prove they're right?
You couldn't and they can't. There is no method available to confirm or disprove what was said about the watermelon. Therefore we can dismiss the theory of the blue interior of watermelons as being pure speculation and guess work, not science. You can not say something is true without demonstrating how it is not false, and you can not say something is not true without demonstrating how it is false. Any theory that can not explain how to both validate and falsify its claims in this manner can not be taken seriously. If one could demonstrate clearly that the watermelon appears to indeed be blue inside, without being able to demonstrate what colors it is not, we still have no absolute confirmation of its color. That is to say asserting something is the way it is, without being able to assert what it is not, is a useless claim. Therefore, in order for any theory to be confirmed to be true, it must be shown how to both validate and falsify its claims. It is circular reasoning to be able to validate something, without saying how to falsify it, or vice versa. This is the nature of verification and falsification. Both must be clearly demonstrated in order for a theory to be confirmed to be true or false. Something can not be proven to be true without showing that it is not false, and something can not be proven to be not true, unless it can be proven to be false.
Unfortunately, Darwin never properly demonstrated how to falsify his theory, which means evolution has not properly been proven, since it has never been demonstrated what the evidence does not suggest. In the event that evolution is not true, there should be a clear and defined method of reasoning to prove such by demonstrating through evidence that one could not possibly make any alternative conclussions based on said evidence. It is for this reason we must be extremely skeptical of how the evidence has been used to support evolution for lack of proper method of falsification, especially when the actual evidence directly contradicts the theory. If it can be demonstrated how to properly falsify evolution, regardless if evolution is true or not, only then can evolution ever be proven or disproved.
It will now be demonstrated that Darwin never told us how to properly falsify evolution, which will also show why no one can claim to have disproved or proven the theory, until now. It must be able to be demonstrated that if evolution were false, how to go about proving that, and while Darwin indeed made a few statements on this issue, his statements were not adequate or honest. In order to show Darwin's own falsification ideas are inadequate, rather than discussing them and disproving them individually, all that needs to be done is demonstrate a proper falsification argument for evolution theory. That is to say if the following falsification is valid, and can not show evolution to be false, then evolution theory would be proven true by way of deductive reasoning. That is the essence of falsification; if it can be shown that something is not false, it must therefore be true.
So the following falsification method must be the perfect counter to Darwin's validation method, and would therefore prove evolution to be true in the event this falsification method can not show evolution to be false. As said before; if something is not false, it must therefore be true. This would confirm the accuracy of this falsification method, which all theories must have, and show that Darwin did not properly show how evolution could be falsified, in the event that evolution was not true. In order to show evolution is not false (thereby proving it to be true), we must be able to show how it would be false, if it were. Without being able to falsify evolution in this manner, you can not validate it either. If
I'm awfully amused of the misuse of the term, "Ditto-Head" in a Darwinism piece to bash non-compliant thought. The term came from Rush Limbaugh Show that shorted air time of people saying how much they loved the show and it had nothing to do with following in lock step, mind numbed robots, like the faithful followers of Darwinism do today. Now if this overview of the article has a fatally flawed description, what is a good Darwinist to do?
'nuff said.
By joining into the debate anywhere but on the legislative and judicial level (where it actually matters), you're only strengthening the argument for creationism, if just on the subconsious level. Ignore them in public debate and their argument will die. Why must we keep dredging this up every time the religious zealots start to let this slide? If the zealots are losing their battle(s) in Texas, you can be sure they're not winning anywhere else.
moox. for a new generation.
I'm not sure about his theory being untestable. Although it couldn't make predictions about the future, evolution was quite specific about what the past should look like.
One of the early problems with evolution was that the fossil record did not appear to fit the theory, the earliest fossils known were of relatively complex creatures which all appeared in a certain era. These fossils were discovered later.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
Basicly this says that we must stop treating evolution as a theory and instead embrace it as truth.
Well, one of the wedges that Creationists use in debate and in writings is the duality of the word "Evolution". It can mean both the fact of evolution - that populations change over time, AND to refer to the Theory of Evolution based on Natural Selection. Fruitcakes like Kent Hovind even extend it to encompass the evolution of the universe since the Big Bang, which is obviously completely unrelated to the biological evolution of life on Earth.
We have to be vigilant at all times over the way Creationists play with words like "Theory" and "Evolution" and pick them up on it, tie them down to which particular meaning they are using at the time. Of course, they can in turn use this to advantage in debates by accusing scientists of being pernickety fusspots, or even underhand and rhetorical themselves. It's a tightrope, Spud ! A f***ing tightrope !
These guys put it better than me.
Squirrel!
This is great subject matter, whilst smoking a bowl with pals. So many directions we could go with this. (takes another hit) Huh, WHAT!?....who said that?!.... (checks pulse, looks in mirror) shit what was I doing now?... *It was funny to me when I wrote this!* *So F off!*
Also, not understanding the underlying mechanics of a system does not automatically invalidate a theory explaining them. Exhibit A: Gravity.
Valid point . but that doesen't give any one a free ride to prepetuate any bullshit theory too. you might notice that by this standard ID also has a strong case.
somethings are best left unsaid , I am one of those things
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/evolutionists_flock_to_darwin Oh its a religion alright!!!!!!!!!!
I'm really sorry anyone is comparing any scientific idea to "Creationism" or the current flavor of the month "Intelligent Design" which from every angle I can see is neither. Evolution as a general study covers everything from punctuated equilibrium, to impact of ionizing radiation on nucleotides. There must be dozens, maybe hundreds of different disciplines, technologies, framed of reference, scientific venues, and interrelated studies. This would be like comparing a sequoia to a blade of astro-turf, and arguing they are equal because they are both green.
Creationism is a belief system in search of evidence to justify it's validity. This someone opening a box of puzzle pieces, cutting all the none conforming bits off the pieces, and forcing them into some semblance of a presupposed picture. In short this is a mental illness. It is someone who places more importance in the way they want things to be, than the way they in fact are. This is magical thinking. Most human beings develop beyond this level of function at about the age of 10. It is no more ludicrous than Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
The nature of science is you have an idea. You test it against the world. If the data doesn't match the theory, the theory is wrong, and you need to rethink it. No handpicking data to match your theory. Scientist who do that are called frauds, and lose the respect and recognition of their peers almost instantly. This isn't to say that there isn't belief, politics, and hubris among scientists. It's hard to ignore human foibles, but at least one can account for them. Magical thinking doesn't even try. Those same foibles are point and purpose to magical thinking, and any truth that happens there is purely coincidental.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, it _still_ isn't testable, since it has idiocies like "sexual selection" tacked on to it as a catch-all for everything it couldn't actually explain. (Why did the peacock evolve such a big and handicapping tail? Hur-hur-hur, to impress women, Beavis.)
The problem is that no matter how you slice it, it proposes that an organism can also evolve towards _less_ fit, i.e., that sometimes natural selection works against the logical direction or in some random direction. You can't falsify something with such a catch-all clause. It predicts that something will get more fit for the environment... except in the unpredictable cases where it actually evolves to be less fit.
It's like saying that gravity makes bodies attract each other... except when they repulse each other, or make each other move in a random direction. That's not falsifiable, i.e., plain old not science.
Why do I call it idiotic?
A) Because it handwaves away half the problem. Ok, so male peacocks evolved so to impress the females. But why did females evolve that trait then? Going strictly natural selection, if that tail were indeed a disadvantage, some females would be randomly born with a preferrence for smaller tails and mate with males with smaller tails, their children would have less of a disadvantage, repeat. So natural selection would guide things towards removing that handicap anyway.
Just because sex is involved in selecting that, it doesn't mean it is the only factor or evolutionary pressure. If it were a disadvantage for males, then natural selection among _females_ would phase it out.
B) Because it doesn't even try to see if there's another advantage to that. It's a catch-all "I don't know why it's like that, so it must be about sex." And I mean other disadvantages like:
- disruptive camouflage. Just because for the advanced image recognition circuitry of a primate something stands out like a sore thumb, it doesn't mean it's like that for other species too. E.g., an orange tabby tomcat is actually very well camouflaged for its prey, because its many lines prevent a mouse's simple circuitry from figuring out the shape of the cat. E.g., the lines of the zebras are a nightmare for lions.
A peacock's tail's patterns would be a right nightmare for many species of predators.
- apparent size. Most animals don't have the circuitry to really figure out the real size of an opponent, so a bigger total shape means a bigger animal. E.g., there's a reason why your cat puffs up and turns sideways when it tries to scare off a potential enemy. For your advanced brain it's the same cat, but for another cat it's "whoa, it just got a lot larger." E.g., just putting a tophat on a kid makes him/her look like a less tempting prey to a hyena, because it looks bigger.
A peacock's tail makes it look freaking big. A lot of the smaller predators would be a lot less inclined to mess with it.
- protecting one's young and females. Many species essentially take a personal risk to try to lure a predator away from their children. Even a personal disadvantage can be an evolutionary advantage if it helps save your kids.
- aposematism. Sometimes you want to make yourself visible as an easily recognizable warning. E.g., see ladibugs being that brightly coloured. It was actually an evolutionary advantage to make sure that whatever bird tasted a ladybug once, can easily recognize and avoid others.
But here's the fun part: sometimes it's an evolutionary advantage to imitate such a species. If the predators already are "trained" to avoid species X, it can be an advantage to look like species X although you don't have the same defenses.
So the peacock could have simply evolved to look like _something_ that the predators would rather avoid. E.g., to show a bigger version of a pattern of a more dangerous predator, or of a toxic/stinging plant that everybody avoids, etc.
- changing conditions. Just because something looks like a pure disadvantage to you now, it could have been an advantage against
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The only people who go on and on ad nauseum about "Darwinism", as if it were the be-all and end-all of Evolutionary Theory, are the Creationists.
Don't forget the greedy, the exploitative, and their apologists also crow about darwinism.
Anyone who is poor is obviously lazy/inferior (always stated indirectly so they can label anyone who calls a spade a spade a cook)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The problem with Darwin is that nobody actually read his books but everybody is talking about him. Therefore he is one of the most misunderstood man in history. :-)
It is the same with Slashdot, everybody comments on stories they didn't read. Including me right now
You don't build a house THEN come up with the idea to build a house. The Meta-Physical Idea ALWAYS precedes the Physical implementation. Darwinism completely ignores this, and is junk science as it is completely ass-backwards.
What the (biological) Evolutionists completely fail to understand that there is ALSO Spiritual evolution. In the same manner a mind matures and is able to do basic arithmetic, and eventually calculus, a person's understanding of Morality, Ethics, and their Understanding of the All-Parent / All-That-Is / God / Goddess also becomes more complete as they get older as they understand the Spiritual Laws.
Creationism tries to fill this gap, and fails miserably because it trying to solve the _wrong_ problem.
I can't wait for First Contact when all this nonsense gets put behind us, when people finally learn the truth about the development of this planet. Bring on Homo Spiritus.
--
End Racism. Support the Human Race.
They do believe in natural selection obviously, since you can't make predictions (hence, do any science at all) from ID.
From a strict technical, linguistic-nazi, point of view : they don't *believe in* natural selection, they *believe that natural selection is an useful model they can use*.
Usually the phrase *believe in* implies some form of faith.
Whereas scientist *just pick up* a model they consider the best for the situation, based on how much usable it is for making accurate predictions.
No faith required.
But apart from the nit-picking about words, I agree with you : ID is useless because its principle simply contradict the way science work - it's not a model you can use to make any useful prediction at all.
Sometimes deprecated model are used because they are accurate enough in a simpler subset of problems : Newton's physic is simpler to use than Einstein's, yet still good enough at low energy/speed/mass.
In the case of evolution and natural selection, the model is currently still the best one, considering the tons of additional material that has been added to it.
And considering the fact that each time a completely brand new branch of biology appears (like genetics), the data produced results still in accordance to what would expect when using the evolution and natural selection models.
Currently that's the best model we have and a better one has yet to come.
ID is no possible contender, as its fundamental principle aren't scientific : scientific model are made to be used to make prediction, and to model the world in order to understand it better. ID tells us that everything is done on the will of some higher being (and thus nothing could be predicted) and some things are just too complex to be explainable (and thus you can't model the world).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
He adds that nobody talks about Newtonism or Einsteinism
No one talks about "Darwinism" except the creationists. The reasons he gives are exactly the reasons they invented the term - it's far easier to discredit a dead guy from 100 years ago than it is a scientific concept.
By making it seem like the work of one man with millions of blind followers it appears more fallible.
Their tactics are pretty ironic really.
Any definition of "theory" is made up, because English is a human construct. Falsifiability is a key part of Popper's philosophy of science. Popper's own views on Darwinism appear to have changed over time.
People saying Darwinism probably do so with a specific context in mind, or because they're idiot creationists. Creationists probably think if they refer to it as Darwinism that it sounds more like some kind of philosophical following / religion with a measure of doubt rather than the cold hard fact that evolution really is.
The only people who habitually use the term Darwinism are creationist asses who want to propagate the notion that we worship Darwin like some kind of demigod. But if we refrain from celebrating him as the guy who launched the theory of evolution, the terrorists win!
Rational people should carry on doing exactly what they're doing. Darwin was a visionary; I don't see the problem with acknowledging this.
Perhaps the term 'Darwinism' was coined after it became apparent that the theories of Mr Darwin were applicable far beyond the realm of biology. Do a wikipedia for 'Social Darwinism' or apply Darwin's principles the observation of any long-term competition of ideas, people, critters, etc. The word Darwinism is worthwhile, because Darwinism is everywhere.
Allow me just a few points. BTW I am an evolutionary biologist. Carl Safina, with all due respect, is not.
First, let's get one thing straight that the author of the article confuses. "Evolution" is the observation that all living things seem to be related, plus the observation of the change of the living world in time. This observations are older than Darwin. "Theory of evolution" is any theory that tries to explain this observation. "Neodarwinism" or "Synthetic Theory of Evolution" is one particular theory that involves the mechanism called "natural selection". Natural selection is a mechanism that can be observed. Darwin's greatness was in linking this mechanism to the rise and change in complexity of all living things, and in the ability to foresee the consequences that only recently started being fully understood.
1) "Equating evolution with Charles Darwin ignores 150 years of discoveries"
First, nowadays formally we use the terms "neodarwinism" or "synthetic theory of evolution". "Darwinism" is most often used in certain popular (non-scientific) texts, and also by creationists.
2) "Using phrases like Darwinian selection or Darwinian evolution implies there must be another kind of evolution at work, a process that can be described with another adjective."
Well, of course, as any of my students would immediately ask "what about lamarckian evolution?" (an alternative explanation for the process of evolution, largely rejected or falsified by observations)
3) "And isms (capitalism, Catholicism, racism) are not science."
Yeah, right, like electromagnetism, empiricism or autism.
4) "What Darwin had to say about evolution basically begins and ends right there."
If this only was so simple. Darwin, as I mentioned before, not only proposed natural selection as an important mechanism of evolution, but also was able to point out the consequences, ranging from kin selection to the role of sexual reproduction.
5) Do you really believe that creationists would less fiercely attack a "synthetic theory of evolution"? The problem is much, much deeper than just an association or a given name.
Cheers,
j.
Imagine if the "no longer strictly follows the founder's work as documented in the book" rule were applied to the large body of practices and dogma known as Christianity ...
Would still be fought to the ground by stupid American creationists. It doesn't matter what you call it, how you present it, or how you teach it. They're not denying it for any other reason than 'it's not in the Bible'.
For someone accusing me of using strawmen, you sure rush to do your own. I never said that.
Nor that.
Well, gee, since both are your own retarded strawmen, why don't you use better ones if you know they're utter bollocks?
Learn to read, cretin. Address what was actually written there, or take a fucking hike and stop pollutting the thread with fighting your own delusions.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well since creationism is the theory that god created everything it doesn't really matter what we say or call stuff. It's not like god is going wrong about anything and it's not like creationists ever are going to listen to reason. So this isn't really a scientific problem but a theological one.
Well, gee, and here I had already mentioned random genetic mutations in the message you answer to.
Bingo. Hence my having a problem with a clause that essentially says "but sometimes it evolves to have a disadvantage. For sex reason, see." At any rate, I never said the contrary of what you wrote above, so I'm not sure what's your point.
But you'd have already noticed that if you had actually read what I wrote, instead of jumping to the canned answers.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
it won't stop me from defiantly claiming that Darwin's writings are the dog's dangly bits! I dare say the creationists will fully agree with me there!
You need to understand that random mutations and natural selection was a novel idea at the time of Darwin, to explain evolution (the changing of species over time). It is different from Lamarckian evolution for example, which explains evolution with the striving of organisms for perfection (IIRC).
Probably like there were Aristotelian mechanics before Newtonian mechanics (which didn't describe reality actually very well at all).
Well my point is that (A) yes, it evolved simply because it's an advantage, but (B) the standard darwinistic view is basically that it's a disadvantage, and there just to impress the females. And I wrote all that long rant about A, just because I find B an illogical kludge.
I'm _not_ against darwinism or natural selection. I'm just against the "sexual selection" cludge. That's all. Remove that kludge, and I'm perfectly content with Darwinism.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
A) Yes, I mean the complementary trait.
B) You're ascribing human behaviour to a nearly-brain-dead bird. They don't do complex plans to ensure that their kids will look good to brides. They just have a gene which says "pick the biggest tail" here and now.
C) See random mutations again.
Eventually some females would be born without that gene broken, so they go and mate with the male with the smallest tail. If a smaller tail were an advantage, then their kids live longer and get more chances to reproduce. With each other if nobody else wants them. Repeat a few generations, and that trait will be on its way to extinction.
A species having a handicap is just that: being less fit for its environment, and on the losing side of natural selection. And "because females prefer handicapped males" is just a handicap in itself. We're back to square one: that species evolved a handicap. Why? Wasn't the whole idea that the less handicapped survive?
And the saving grace I propose is: well, that tail is probably not a handicap at all, or wasn't when the species evolved. Let's start looking at what other disadvantages it might have, before reaching for the non-falsifiable catch-all "sexual selection" clause.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The author of this article makes it seem like the term "Darwinism" is thrown around by scientists all the time. They never give a reference of where they've seen this term, like "according to this database, a million published papers mention Darwinism". That is bad journalism.
In a previous article about the Discovery Institute's ID textbook, it is pointed out that no one says this. It is just a term created by creationists to use in their arguments. But, it is understandable how someone clinging to ideals would think scientists do the same.
Also, this seems mostly like an American thing. NPR has a story that says no one thinks this way in the UK.
I thought the only people calling it "Darwinism" were Creationist nutcases.
That was the whole topic: how did it get there if it handicaps the species?
Bingo. That's the whole point: if it was a handicap for the species, it should have happened. That's the basic prediction of natural selection.
Do you need the "hysterical trolling" insult to make your point? Ok, probably since you offered no other evidence other than some hot air about "Wrong, at least to those of us who understand what fitness means in an evolutionary context." Plus some comprehension problems like shown above.
So here's the deal: why don't _you_ quit trolling and actually contribute more than ego-masturbation?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Too many scientists have seen their careers (and lives) destroyed for differing from the establishment over the thousands of years of scientific investigation. The adherents to the most popular theory always get angry when their peaceful world is opposed. This tendency to greet opposition with mocking and hatred will always result in terms like Marxism or Darwinism being applied. No amount of "New Speak" will remove "Darwinism" from the common folk's vocabulary, only changes in behavior will remove it.
Obviously Newtonian physics must die too. Heck, we even know that one is technically wrong/incomplete, but it's still taught.
In geology, we use the term "plutonism" to refer to processes involving igneous intrusive rocks (e.g., granite), in reference to the god of the underworld (Pluto). It dates from an 18th to early 19th-century debate between "neptunism" and "plutonism" about the origin of granites and other igneous rocks (the neptunists thought these rocks formed under water -- they were spectacularly wrong). Should we also get rid of that term because creationists might be able to twist the ancient neptunism-plutonism debate into something that could fit a global flood?
Look, if all he's complaining about is the word "Darwinism", big deal. It's just a label for Darwin's version of biological evolution. It doesn't change the theory, which has indeed changed since Darwin's presentation of it. It's no different from Newtonian gravitation or the Bohr model of the atom.
And if it's any consolation, I rarely refer to biological evolution as "Darwinism" anyway. About the only time I come close is when mentioning the neodarwinian synthesis. Scientists may have come up with the terms, but they aren't exactly fond of them. It's the creationists who like using the term because it fits their preconceptions and ideological goals. I'm sure Ben Stein would make just as stupid a movie whether the term existed or not.
"Darwinism" implies that biological scientists "believe in" Darwin's "theory."..
Isn't that exactly the problem? Many (semi-)scientists proclaim Darwin's discoveries to be the opposite of the theory that there exists a god.
Darwin's valuable insights neither concern the existence of a god nor the question of how things came into existence in the 'beginning of time'. Nor do Gregor Mendel's patterns of heredity, the discovery of DNA, developmental biology, studies documenting evolution in nature, or evolution's role in medicine and disease.
By linking these two and finding them mutually exclusive, both scientists and creationists completely fail their cause.
Mattijs
Darwinism implies an ideology adhering to one man's dictates, like Marxism, says Safina
Yes that's correct. Nonetheless there is a reason one still refers to "Marxism": While biologists accepted Darwin's fundamental discoveries and built on them, social and economic sciences spent the last century trying to refute Marx's theories. Theories that do represent a good model to understand our society.
Check out my cross-platform apps
not the Catholics
...explain why wings were evolved? I know they're ultimately useful, but how was it that all the little stubby bits on their way to wings were selected for?
Maybe there's an argument along the lines of Attenborough's recent production where he describes how a light-sensitive dot becomes an eye: a pit produces shadows for identifying light direction, becoming more spherical for production of a vague image, then mucous hardening to focus light. I can understand this progress because at each stage you have something more useful than the last, and I can even believe that associated mutations meant that some organisms reacted "correctly" to their new ability to recognise direction.
There's so much evidence for micro-evolution. Even one of my first zealously religious creationist teachers acknowledged its occurrence, while I was annoying enough by the age of 11 to ask, "OK, so if lots of little changes can happen serially, why won't that produce big changes over time?" At the time I didn't receive an adequate answer, so I remained a supporter of evolution as a proud young advocate of science. But today, as a mathematician, I feel I'm lacking a more statistically precise production: given the age of the planet, and given changes in environment, and given the frequency of mutations, etc., is there some sort of numerical analysis that illustrates that it is perfectly plausible for a wing to have evolved?
So, evolutionary biologists, can you point me please to something I could read that can satisfy my curiosity? Put another way - what's progress like on simulating macro-evolution?
Happy birthday Thursday Big D. I hope I am still pissing people off as much as you do over a hundred years after I am gone.
Sounds more like Hippy Evolution to me.
That's all lovely and warm and fuzzy, but such baseless nonsense has nothing at all to do with the matter at hand.
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
This so reeks like another GNU/Linux war. Catchiness beats beancounting.
we should let this meme roam free, and see if it survives against various ideological predators and competes successfully against perhaps better adjusted memes. it may need to give birth to offspring with modified arguments, some of which might better serve to ensure the idea's longterm survivability, however altered
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually, that's my problem: that only sees half the problem. There are actually _two_ distinct mutations at work here:
A) the mutation that causes males to have big tails.
B) the mutation that causes females to like males with big tails.
Yes, sexual selection explains mutation A perfectly, by taking B for granted. It's hard to argue why A happened when you see their mating rituals. I'm not arguing that.
_My_ problem however is: why did mutation _B_ happen and get selected by natural selection? And _if_ it causes a harmful trait, why didn't natural selection eliminate it yet?
I tend to think of them as "the sane ones." ;) Unfortunately, "sexual selection" is still widely taught as a fact, and the peacock is still the poster child for it.
I have nothing against all that, and in fact I believe all that to be a fact. We already agree upon that part. In fact I base my rationale on all that.
I just don't believe that sexual selection can produce evolution in a _harmful_ direction. Precisely because then it would be selected against. But if it's neutral or associated with something useful, then I have no objection whatsoever.
But if that's the case, then I'd say that you don't actually need "sexual selection" much. It's at best just a detail, not a distinct kind of selection. E.g., if the long tails only happened to be associated with a more useful trait (e.g., because as usual one gene controls 3-4 different things), then what actually happened is normal natural selection of that more useful trait.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
When I read the word "darwinism" I think about "social darwinism", which was the bullshit interpretation nazis used to justify their bloody stupid actions. It was survival of the fittest all right, they just had a really screwed up idea of what "fit" means... same with "survival", and I think they just skipped the "natural" part of "natural selection".
(note: according to wikipedia, "social darwinism" is an abiguous term which has many interpretations, I just took one of them in this case)
Also, first time I hear the term "darwinism" applied to the actual ideas of darwin. Where I live the words used are "natural selection" or "evolution", and there aren't any asshats meddling in that part of education, you just get taught that if the individuals of a species can't reproduce, the species doesn't survive, period. Is it really that hard to understand?!?!?
Ok, thanks for the correction. I'll call it "classical evolution" then, to avoid any further confusion.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...because of Darwin? Sounds a little bass-ackwards to me.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Instead of the classic vulgar misreading of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in which this and that scientific principle is "just a theory" ("So why can't I call creationism _my_ theory?"), this is what he was writing about -- periodically changing the paradigm of thought to one that melds better with the sum of current observations. In short, a good idea that is more about the culture of science surrounding evolution.
There's no reason it has to be only one or the other, is there?
If anything, theory of evolution would tend to highly approve of making multiple uses out of something.
Ok, that makes more sense then. However, I'm not sure that the standard view of sexual selection is that the feathers are a disadvantage that just happen to impress females. As you said, if the tail was a disadvantage that would seem absurd.
Sounds more like something you'd want to go to a peacock specialist rather than a darwin's theory generalist. It could indeed also be used to scare predators while the male gets up to flight speed.
But, either way, it doesn't invalidate darwin's theory. Let's face it, many male spiders get eaten when they mate. None the less, the male becoming food for the female is a net benefit for the spider's genes, so as long as it successfully mates before becoming food. Darwin's theory doesn't require the survival of the individual, just the genes. And it's also a probabilistic statement, it's all about tendencies. An animal might have the best possible genetics and still taken out by accident, disease, or predator.
I don't read AC A human right
I've rarely such unexpurgated garbage in my life. It's a sterile semantic argument stirred with misapprehensions.
For a start, Newtonian mechanics is referred to, and often, sometimes by proper scientists, even though Newton didn't do all the work. It's just a shorthand for a model that works adequately in the everyday human-scale world.
In the same way, Darwinian evolution is shorthand for the simple rules of thumb that Darwin suggested, and we refer to Darwinism because Wallacism sounds silly.
And the hubristic assertion that science was 'primitive' in Darwin's day assumes that science today is 'advanced'. Give it another 150 years, and that claim might look a little premature.
Finally, creationism belongs in a different category. Creationists have one thing to say, and they've said it. What more do they want?Scientists, on the other hand, have lots of interesting and useful things to find out, and need support and encouragement to do so. Pitching the two against each other is like pitching bassoonists against bankers - there's no appropriate contest and thus no sensible outcome.
However at least the Catholic church isn't dismissing the idea's, which is a long way from the outright attacks made by more fundamentalist churches. The thing about this debate is that while fundamental theist's attack science and the theory of evolution using doubt, no counter-argument is made that has any impact on the faith of proponents of Intelligent Design.
Science and Religion are different bodies of knowledge, but not mutually exclusive because both use reason as a tool for different goals. There are scientific people who are religious and religious people who are scientific. Making a science based argument about the ignorance of Intelligent Design to someone who has a predominately religious background make both sides dig their heals in. That's why this debate has become so polarised.
I've found that having an understanding of the doctrine that supports scientific investigation and framing that discussion so that it attacks the underpinnings of Intelligent Design an important tool. Building and demonstrating an understanding of the theocratic aspects of this debate is an important tool to disarming the proponents of Intelligent Design and helping them understand why science is important to their faith.
A scientific argument explaining the shortcomings of Intelligent Design to a religious person really just reveals their ignorance of science and, as such, they feel ignorant of science but it's not important to them.
A theocratic argument explaining the shortcomings of Intelligent Design to a religious person reveals the shortcomings of Intelligent Design when compared to the discoveries made by a study of Evolution.
When confronted with one of these discussions I point out that Intelligent Design limits how far humanity explores nature, or in theocratic terms "the works of God". I go on to point out that there is nothing in the Theory of evolution that attacks Christian beliefs but, in fact, uses science as a tool to uncover the amazing wonder of how nature works, or in theocratic terms "the glory of God".
It's at this point that proponents of Intelligent Design start to join the dots for themselves. The insecurity they feel about Darwin's idea's attacking their belief system give way to the possibility that Intelligent Design could actually be a form of blasphemy, something that is important to a religious person.
I think it's important to frame the debate this way because the Intelligent Design position cleverly deceives religious people into accepting ignorance over education and promotes the notion that science aims to dispel religion. Science and Religion have to co-exist in society if we are to dispel ignorance and fundamentalism.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
In particular there is a tendency of creationists to cling to the idea of "social darwinism" to justify things like regressive taxation.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So changing the name to influence people that a evolutionary fictional "theory" is somehow "science" and "fact"? I think it should continue to be called Darwinism, despite half of Darwin's publications being proven false. Sorry silly liberals, I don't believe we "evolved" from Monkeys, and that bacteria was created from a lightening bolt and water.
You know, I hate arguments like these because they are fundamentally flawed. What I am about to say is politically incorrect (but mathematically true) and if this offends you - piss off because it's the truth.
Many things in nature conform to the "normal", "bell" or "Gaussian" distribution curve, and that includes human intelligence. Makes sense that a few people will be extremely bereft of intelligence, a few people will be super-gifted, and most of us will be somewhere around the middle. That's statistics.
However when you look at scientists, most of us have graduate or postgraduate degrees. Most of us were always nerds, studied hard, passed the exams, etc. Most of us can be considered above average intelligence - for a given definition of intelligence (the ability to pass tests, work out problems, etc).
What does this mean? It means that if we're on the right side of the gauss curve, the majority of people are dumber than us because the 50% population mark is right on the "average" intelligence line (that's how bell curves work) and we are above average. Some are so extremely distanced from us (those on the "other" side of the curve, below the 50% mark) that we fail to understand that it is impossible that they will ever grasp even the simplest concepts. Not unlikely - impossible.
Now some people like the author think that by changing the words around they can help the less gifted half understand a key concept that for any scientist is really extremely basic, extremely obvious, and unquestionably accurate. This is not true. Darwin and Wallace deserve the credit for the work that they did. We scientists are supposed to be humble, but we delight in exalting the rare few in our field that rise above the rest and point something out that helps us greatly in our daily chore of understanding the universe. Frankly I don't CARE what creationists think. None of them are noteworthy scientists, none of them will ever get published in the magazines I read, and no one but other "less gifted" individuals will listen to the garbage they spit out.
I think that although it's very human to try to reach out and help those less fortunate, in this case it's a complete waste of time - as much a waste of time as it is for a Jehova's Witness to come knocking at my door to talk to me, a passionate atheist, about God. This time and energy (and paper, in the case of NY Times articles) would be far better used for something else than trying to enlighten the ignorant who are happy in their ignorance. The great thing about intelligence is that it's a hunger that needs to be fed. You don't have to FORCE someone to learn. If they are smart, they will want to learn all on their own. THOSE are the people we have to help - not the ones who refuse to listen.
Leave the damned language as it is - nothing is gained by changing the words used. Anyone who needs to understand CAN understand, as is. We've been doing ok for the past few generations. By changing the language all you do is take credit away from deserving scientists. No one is made smarter, and no "creationists" will drop their lunatic fantasies by taking the word "Darwin" out of evolution.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
WHARRGARBL
wharrgarbl
The article is somewhat right, though I'm going to rant some on my fellow Christians who are simply fairly ignorant on the advances in scientific thought when it particularly applies to evolution. There's simply little to no education on the matter in the church walls, just as there is probably just as much misunderstanding as to how smart some theologians are and have been in the atheistic realm.
That aside, the discussion here has again devolved into a "gee, Christians sure are stupid" type debate without looking at the bigger picture. Christians ask GOOD questions that, at times, seem to have no sensical answer - such as how does anything exist, ever? How can nothing become something?
Also from this side of things, it does appear that there is a certain stance that non-theistic scientists can take that looks a LOT like faith, in discarding certain theories once disproved, yet still holding on to certain principle ideas that God cannot be behind it all. We question the thought that if science is supposed to keep all possibilities open unless disproven, then how can something be counted out? Isn't believing that God isn't out there sometimes take just as much faith as otherwise?
Is it that He's NOT out there, or we just don't want Him to be because of the consequences it may mean for our lives?
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So no more Darwin Awards?
It would be a pity if we had to purge the name "Charles Darwin" from the history of science in order to satisfy some religious fanatics who simply refuse to live in a world where not everyone shares their superstitious beliefs. That they would insinuate themselves at all in the world of Reason is outrageous. How many advances in biology and medicine have been delayed because of researchers' fear of these medieval god-botherers getting all up in their beeswax?
I'm starting the countdown until we tell all the "fundamentalist" bullies in this country to go fuck themselves right...now.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I see a lot of posts here saying that the term "Darwinism" is used entirely by Creationists looking to equate evolution with a false deity. I will admit that this is largely true. However, as a former creationist, I have to tell you that the term "Darwinism" isn't the issue. The problem is that many evolutionists do seem to equate Darwin as evolution.
Take, for instance, an issue of National Geographic from a few months ago. The cover was white, with some sort of lizard (an iguana maybe?) on the cover. In large letters at the bottom, it asked the provocative question "Was Darwin Wrong?" The article itself concluded that no, he was not. But still, that headline doesn't say "Is Evolution Wrong?" Instead, it pushes Darwin as the mascot of evolution. National Geographic is hardly alone in this, as pretty much an science magazine or website or whatever will have these "Darwinist" articles.
My point here is that while the term "Darwinism" might be used mostly by creationists, it's not like evolutionists don't help push it. It's a public perception thing, not necessarily what actually happens. If people stop talking about Darwin so much and instead talk about the big picture, then I think we'll see creationists stop attacking Darwin's strawman and instead attack evolution itself â"â" a much more difficult position to hold, and one that will eventually end with the creationists fading away.
Just in the links that have been provided, they destroy just about everything that you write. Yet, you would never consider it so. I once had a lengthy discussion with an adult student of mine who belonged to Focus on the Family. His argument was that the earth was 5000 years old and carbon dating did not work. When I asked him why he said that, he explained that Dobson on the radio did a carbon dating of a knife BLADE and it indicated less than 100 years old. When I pointed out that Carbon Dating ONLY works on past living material and that it was false to use the metal blade, his argument was that I was wrong and Dobson was correct in using it.
THe simple fact is, that ppl like you will NEVER allow logic or facts to destroy your POV of the world. That is why America is in the shape that we are today. In fact, that is why the political world is in the shape it is. You are really no different than Al Qaeda. They have a warped view, but it is similar to yours. Both of you believe that the world MUST bend to what you believe from a religious POV.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If the theory of evolution of man wants broader acceptance, it should start with an attempts to portray it as something it is not. It is not proven fact. It is theory. A remarkably well supported theory with a lot of evidence to back it up. But it is theory.
Schools would get a lot less blowback if they would present it as a theory that must be learned and understood rather than as a fact that must be believed. Simple things like writing not your test questions as "T/F Man descended from other life forms", which my force a child to deny his beliefs in order to get a grade, would help. Instead write "T/F According to the theory of evolution, Man descended from other life forms". The kid learns the science and the community has no reason to get in an uproar.
Knowing what other educated people know and/or believe is an important part of an education. Ancient mythology was considered part of a good education for many years. Even the most anti-evolution parent should be able to understand the importance of "knowing your enemy". So long as the material is presented as something to know rather than something to believe, you should avoid a lot of trouble.
Of course of a lot of slashdotters will insist that the theory of evolution is fact, so why not present it that way. Well, if the evidence is enough to convince you, then why not let the evidence stand on its own and convince others? If the kids are required to learn what the theory of evolution says and what the supporting evidence is, why not let them reach their own conclusions about it? Why do you feel a need to insist that they agree with yours?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Darwin's ideas are, in point of fact, a species of orthodoxy, just like creationism. The important thing to remember is that religion and science deal with new ideas in precisely opposite ways.
If a creationist theologian examines the notion that man is descended from other apes, he refers to the assertions of his orthodoxy, and sees that God created Adam on the seventh day, and therefore rejects this new idea. If an anthropologist examines the idea that such and such a hominid was an ancestor of man, then he sets out to prove that the notion is inconsistent with known fact. He sets out, in effect, to prove that evolution did not happen in this case.
The statistician's name for this notion is "the null hypothesis". In setting out to prove an idea, you set out to disprove the null hypothesis. In this game, the null hypothesis is considered innocent until proven guilty: any reasonable grounds whatsoever for accepting the null hypothesis is allowed. If under those slanted rules, the null hypotheses fails, then the idea must be considered consistent with all the facts currently in hand.
Scientific theories perform some of the same functions as religious dogmas in casual reasoning. They can, of course, be wrong and this wrongness can temporarily slow scientific progress. But when it comes down to real work, the core function of a scientific theory is completely opposite to that of religious dogma. Scientific theories are not touchstones; they are sources of ideas to disprove as null hypotheses. The published empirical data are the touchstone against which the scientist sets out to crush the tenets of scientific theory, if he can. If he fails, then he has advance scientific knowledge.
It is their reliability as sources of failing null hypotheses that makes scientific theories practically useful to researchers. The reason a scientist, in his gut, reacts against creationism is he is sure that he will set out to disprove it and succeed.
Now the notion that we've made a religious fetish of Darwin reflect a fundamental misunderstanding about how the differences between theology and science. Scientists are not necessarily philosophers of science, so when they are invited to a debate by theologians, they often unconsciously slip into arguing on theological grounds, or they simply fail to communicate because neither side has any intellectual context for understanding the other, and neither side is aware of this.
If theologians new how scientific theories are actually used they'd be less anxious to seek the imprimatur of the scientific community.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Reading the posts, it's clear that the fearful, hateful, name calling ones agree with Darwin. I've never known a fearful, hateful, name caller to be correct about much, not Hitler, Marx, King, Obama, etc.
There are two issues here and they are often conflated:
Evolution as a process and evolution as a path.
The "process" of evolution is what Darwin documented extensively in "The Origin of Species" and scientists have proved beyond any doubt. The "process" of evolution is a fact.
The "path" of evolution, i.e. where and how a specific species has come to exist is a "study." We can speculate, research, and document what we think archaeological remnants mean, but we can *never* prove that A begot B beyond any doubt. We can only speculate that somewhere in the path of evolution Archeopterix is a predecessor to modern flying birds based on similarities and features.
The beauty of science over religion is that science isn't required to be all knowing and infallible. We can and do make mistakes, but all mistakes are not equal. As Isaac Asimov wrote, the mistakes of science are not arbitrary, they are of the character of increasing precision.
We used to believe the world was flat. That was because the earth looked flat to the available technology of the time. We then measured that the earth MUST be round. The earlier "flat earth" was not wrong, per se' it was the best we could do. The round spherical earth was a better model. Well now we know that the world isn't spherical, it is kind of egg shaped. Again, the spherical thing wasn't wrong, it was the best we could measure. It isn't as if science is going to through up its hands and say, "oops! the world is flat, we were wrong" because the nature of scientific errors aren't like that. The mistakes of science are in the form of new knowledge correcting old conclusions in an ever increasingly accurate set of models.
If I believe in evolution, I usually reply something to the effect of, "It's not a religion that one might believe in... You can either prove it or you can't." The notion of being able to falsify scientific hypothesis seems to be a bit beyond the conceptual grasp of a large portion of the population.
I'm a Christian. Yes, I've seen evidence that there's a God, in fact, rather recently. But my belief in God isn't based on evidence, it's based on faith. That's why it's called religion. Any time a belief system is based on faith rather than repeatable experiments, we have to call it a religion.
I know this is going to ruffle a few feathers, but I'm sick of this debate being rehashed again and again. For many, many years, what was taught as evolution in public schools was largely based on blind faith in evolution. The conflict over evolution in schools had nothing to do with science and everything to do with conflicting belief systems, i.e. atheism versus theism. And for that reason, the teaching of evolutionary theory was slanted toward whatever personal agenda the teacher had with respect to the above debate. Science got lost in the process.
And evolution itself was largely a matter of religious belief for the century after Darwin. Biology was one of the few sciences which accepted a theory which was provably false by anyone with a basic knowledge of statistics. The early theories of natural selection were mathematically sound, but to go the step beyond and claim that "random change" would differentiate species only indicated the discipline's misunderstanding of randomness, and was based largely on faith. It was as if, unable to find a specific cause of speciation, biologists just gave up critical thought and claimed "random chance did it". It was intellectually lazy, and Americans knew it. And this version of evolution would be taught as late as the 1990's.
So when you hear someone questioning darwinism, or evolution, this is what the debate is about. They are probably not aware of the more recent advances in the subject, probably cannot elaborate on any of the specific theories regarding speciation (which, to biology's credit, are actually listing falsifiable hypotheses now). It is not about science, but bad science put forward in the attempt to make a larger cultural change, a shift away from belief in God.
There is no conflict between science and religion, because both seek the truth, but work in different problem domains. That said, though, there's no place for faith in science, and one need not "believe" in it the way one might have faith in the second coming of Christ. The debate over evolution should serve as an indicator of how bad things can get when science attempts to step outside of its proper boundaries into the realm of philosophy and religion. I do not want future spacecraft designed by faith any more than I want future public policy governed solely by science. (While I'll admit that science can inform public opinion, it cannot resolve the ethical and moral questions.)
So before you go about bashing evolution bashers, please remember: most of these people were taught falsehoods in the name of science. Once you address that issue, you'll find that there's really very little left to debate.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Q: Who works in an amphibious garage?
A: Newt-onian mechanics.
I takes a lot of faith to believe that all this is the result of one big accident of nature. Hope that works out for ya.
Incorrect.
It has been demonstrated and verified many times. And it has NEVER been falsified. Not even once.
It is a "theory" ONLY in the scientific sense. Which does not mean the same thing that you seem to believe it does.
And that is EXACTLY what "evolution" is. Any other result would disprove evolution.
A dog cannot give birth to a cat ... according to evolution.
Yet the Creationists keep claiming that evolution is false because a dog cannot give birth to a cat.
Feynmannism (QED), or Einsteinism (relativity)
Does a rose by any other name not smell as sweet?
You are equivocating on the word faith. This is a common error, please don't perpetuate it.
http://www.logicalfallacies.info/equivocation.html
would help you in your life immensely.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
So in other words you don't believe in the existence of Ligers?
> Darwin didn't have a true theory because the idea he had had no predictive power and little explanatory power
Nonsense. The idea of natural selection had such an impact because it provided a single unifying explanation for a huge range of data, ranging from the fossil record to the geographical distribution of existing species. The Origin of Species went to great lengths of show how all this data could be explained by natural selection, and how a different set of data would have contradicted it.
As for generating predictions, here's one: Darwin's Hawk Moth.
I cannot say that I am in any way religious, but you have to recognize that belief in evolution and belief in god is just that, a belief. Neither can be definitively proven or disproved. And both stories start out exactly the same. In the beginning there was nothing. Then there was something. Even the most scientific explanations of where we come from amount to nothing more than faith.
Browse at -1 to keep an eye out for abuses.
I need to leave aside common descent for a moment.
The problem with Darwinism, defined as descent from a universal ancestor by natural selection working on random mutations, is that there is no way to falsify the random aspect of it.
Any Darwinist I've spoken to cannot tell me what type of structure you could find in living organisms which would falsify the random claims. They get around any structure which isn't agreeable to a step-by-step random mutation explanation by appealing to "Darwin of the Gaps" explanations.
Now, this is interesting because Intelligent Design affirms teleology. And Darwinism essentially is a denial of teleology. But the affirmation is not scientific but the denial is scientific.
This leads me to conclude that Darwinists are motivated by other concerns, perhaps subconsciously, and are poor philosophers.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
So creationism or Intelligent Design are individuals or religions' way to integrate current science into existing dogma. So what?
Religions have been morphing and changing for 1000's of years for various reasons.
Shoot, most of the material I read on evolution practically implies intelligence in the process, that it approaches deism. The consumer level science outlets are the worst.
I am an evolutionary biologist (okay, fine, technically a paleontologist) and my dept is considered part of the "Darwinian Science Cluster". Really just means we all study evolution, in one way or another. But there you have it: real scientists calling themselves Darwinian.
So, Darwin does actually have a strong symbolic effect on evolutionary biology, in a way that Einstein or Newton do not have on Physics. We take almost every opprutunity to celebrate the man and his achievements. I know a bunch of people (some scientists, some not) that rushed to their local museum to catch the traveling Darwin exhibit which showcased some of his belongings. Somehow, one of the giant Darwin posters from when that exhibit was at the Field Museum ended up on the wall in my department.
But there's a reason for that. Darwin was an incredibly intelligent guy. Go look at 10 random biology papers dealing with ecology or evolution. I bet at least one will mention how the central question they are dealing with was also asked by Darwin, or considered by Darwin, or mentioned by Darwin. The man quietly and meekly laid the foundations for the science of today.
The whole point of some biologists calling themselves Neodarwinists was to signal to other schools (like the mutationists) that the reconciling of genetics with natural selection explained evolutionary dynamics, without a need for special explanation of the appearance of traits. Hence, Darwin's version of evolution had succeeded again.
All that said, I've never felt biologists failed to also hold up their many other heroes: Haeckel (who coined the word ecology), Huxley, Mayr, Dobzhansky, Wright, Fisher, Haldane, Simpson, D'Arcy Thompson... I mean, just look at how profound an effect that adaptive landscapes, as birthed by Wright and modified by Simpson, have had on biology.
That doesn't seem to me to prove evolution. You could say that god creates things that match, that go together, and He must have made a moth to match that flower.
Not that it's not an insightful prediction, and not that I believe in creationism at all, but it doesn't seem to me like that prediction is based on anything other than understanding the reproduction of flowers and knowing that, given that structure of flower, there must be an insect able to pollenate it.
All things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot;
Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom,
He made their horrid wings.
All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.
Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid.
Who made the spikey urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did.
All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small.
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.
Perhaps, in all His infinite wisdom, God decided to use evolution in creating the world? If we believe the idea that God is omnipotent and all-powerful (like an metaphysical Galactus), saying that He wouldn't use evolution is in effect doubting that.
It's a (relatively) perfect synthesis of the two theories.
If you can read this, it means that I bothered to log in.
You can actually see this on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMVN1EWxfAU
(No, it's not a rickroll. Just a moth.)
This is simply bogus and if I were grading it I would give it a F for plagarism - some student would have some serious explaining to do -
Lets begin with the first statement "Any theory that does not provide a method to falsify and validate its claims is a useless theory." because it tells us much about what follows.
A quick Google proved that this line along with most of this post comes from a video on YouTube by the creationist VenomFangX. For transcripts, link to video and extensive rebuttal see: http://talkingtotheists.blogspot.com/2008/05/story-thus-far-noted-youtube.html
However, I'll leave this alone since I'm not interested in tracing down the ownership of these concepts and sentences rather my concern is with their basic validity.
I could tear into the post but won't bother - the link above does that just fine.
What has been done here or or more properly by VenomFangX is to set up a false dichotomy between a contorted reading of Darwin and Creationist nonsense. He/she complains that you can't test Darwin's theories (note he/she does not say "evolutionary theory" because you can easily test parts of that) and then goes on say that the only alternative is the "God zapped it into existence" theory which, by the way, must automagically be correct. He/she then conveniently forgets to tell us how to test that theory!
This is the same game that Creationist have been playing for years - its bate and switch - applied to Science. There are of course other options - how about Darwin's basic concepts augmented and clarified by over a hundred years of biological discovery, i.e modern evolutionary theory? As any plant or animal breeder or freshman in a college biology course can tell you that "selection" is real and that organisms can pass on these selected characteristics to their progeny. So, parts of evolutionary theory can be easily tested and shown valid - where's the DIRECT EVIDENCE for the "God did it" theory?
The only people I've heard use the phrase "Darwinism" are creationists. The only people I've seen fixate on Darwin and equate Darwin with evolution are creationists. I have to wonder if the author has ever been in an actual debate with one of these people.
Buildings don't start falling down because they're based on Newtonian physics and Newton's theory has had centuries of refinement. Likewise, Darwinism is well understood in the sciences and there is nothing wrong with associating his name with the theory.
We won't get "creationists" to see reason by changing the name. If we called it something else, they'd find something wrong with that term as well. You simply cannot expect a single word to be an intrinsically accurate representation of an entire theory.
Creationists fall into the categories of people too stupid to understand the science and people who deliberately misunderstand in order to win rhetorical arguments. Both kinds of people are a lost cause. We should let them all move into a bunch of religious states and nations and stop sending them technology; everybody would be happier that way.
I think the key to winning the evoultion vs. creationism argument is to have respect for the other side. I know this is hard to do when creationism seems so ludicrous, but keep a few things in mind.
Firstly, properly constructed creationist theories are not falsifiable. If I said that God created the universe 5,000 years ago, but he made it look as if it'd been around for billions of years in order to test our faith, you couldn't prove me wrong. Radio-Carbon dating is based upon the assumption that at one time the ratio of carbon isotopes was at a certain level - you can't use it to prove the age of an object unless you first posit that the object had, at one time, a certain ratio of isotopes. If I just claimed that the object never had that ratio because it was never alive (i.e. that fossil was created as a fossil), you couldn't prove me wrong. Falsifiability is KEY to science, which means creationism can never be science, but it also means that creationism can never be shown to be wrong.
Second, There are intelligent creationists out there. I am working with a guy who got a Ph.D. in theoretical computer science at Stanford. He's absolutely brilliant, and he's also a young earth creationist. You're never going to win a guy like that over by telling him he's stupid and that he's destroying science.
The ONLY way to win someone's mind over is to be patient and respectful. Every human being (even creationists and republicans) deserves that much.
My blog
Economist chart on thinking evolution is true/correct.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
I find it somewhat ironic that we appear to understand and know more about the origins of the universe than we do about the existence of life on this planet.
There was a brilliant Doonesbury on this irony a few years ago. A doctor discovers his patient has drug resistant TB, and asks him if he is a creationist (knowing the answer in advance, presumably from previous discussion). The patient says, "Why yes, I am. Why do you ask?" The Doctor replies:
It gets even funnier from there.
People who want to "believe" superstitious whatnot can certainly do so, but when they insist we teach this in schools, society should revoke their rights to use the fruits of science to sustain their standard of living, until they evolve their thinking. (That prohibition to include guns, which would remain strictly under the control of those who do not believe in armageddon or any other such garbage.)
They can have access to educational materials, but they really need to get back in touch with their superstitious roots, which include praying all winter for warmer weather, as structural engineering requires a scientific understanding of the world which is in conflict with their belief in a benevolent god who magically provides them with whatever they need.
Northern climates are effective at demonstrating that god (for lack of a better term) is ambivalent. Let's set aside a portion of a national forest where they can evolve their belief in science from first principles, like making fire and skinning bears with stone knives.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Religious types are always going to believe what they believe because thats what they do. Are you really so naive to think that if you rebrand something it's going to make an ounce of difference? The ironic part in my mind is every article I've ever read on the subject pretty much perpetuates the idea that there's this big debate going on in America, and I really don't believe there is. I've never really met a creationist in my life, and if I did, I'd prefer not to engage them in a debate because I know ultimately it's like arguing with a 5 year old over the existance of Santa Claus. I think if the pro-evolutionists simply dropped it, the whole issue would become irrelevant... more irrevelvant then it already is.
"There is no proof of one type of animal turning into another"
Because evolution isn't about one animal turning into another. it has more to do with biological adaptation over trillions of generations scaled over billions of years.
The problem you're having is that you somehow believe that the earth was created in 7 days about 4,000 years ago, and that the reason the dinosaurs don't exist is because Noah didn't take them on the ark. And even if there was evolution it would be visible over a span of 1,000 years, since you haven't seen that, then evolution must be "false".
About right?
If you read darwins book he gives 2 conditions that have to be met before evolution can be true, each of which has been proven false. One a complete fossil record, two he thought cell were plasma but it has been proven that there are distinct complex machines with in the cell example maleon motor. Excuse the spelling. Lee Strobel has tried to prove evolution is correct and disprove Christianity. He was unable to and his studies are well documented. Also Dr. Del Tackett explains how the different scientist and their theory's are disproven time and time again. Here are link for those who would like to see the truth. http://www.thetruthproject.org/ http://leestrobel.com/
To quote one of the great thinking minds of the last 100 years:
Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people.
--Ferris Bueller
I don't think so. The evolutionary biologists I know focus very specifically on the chemistry and mathematics of genes. I think it would be at least as accurate to refer to modern evolutionary science as "Mendelian." Natural selection, as Darwin conceived it, is quite limited and vague compared to the state of the science today.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Oh. Wait. You were serious? That was the worst use of modus tollens I've ever seen.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
"MacArthur fellow Carl Safina, an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University, has an interesting essay in the NYTimes that says that equating evolution with Charles Darwin opened the door for creationism by ignoring 150 years of discoveries, including most of what scientists understand about evolution â" Gregor Mendel's patterns of heredity, the discovery of DNA, developmental biology,
Ummm, when have we ignored those? I don't think you'll find a creationist who is ignorant of the existence of DNA. Also, these are not from evolution, these are from biology. Biology != Evolution.
studies documenting evolution in nature, and evolution's role in medicine and disease.
You mean microevolution right? We haven't actually observed one species changing into another. Only one species changing. Go to answersingenesis.com and they have many, many articles on that subject.
Darwinism implies an ideology adhering to one man's dictates, like Marxism, says Safina. He adds that nobody talks about Newtonism or Einsteinism, and that by making Darwin 'into a sacred fetish misses the essence of his teaching.' By turning Darwin into an 'ism,' scientists created the opening for creationism, with the 'isms' implying equivalence. 'By propounding "Darwinism," even scientists and science writers perpetuate an impression that evolution is about one man, one book, one theory,' writes Safina. '"Darwinism" implies that biological scientists "believe in" Darwin's "theory." It's as if, since 1860, scientists have just ditto-headed Darwin rather than challenging and testing his ideas, or adding vast new knowledge.'"
You know why we call it Darwinism? Because some people actually do believe that! Most of them are not the brightest in the bunch, but some do. It's like a religion to them. On the other hand we don't have people like that for Newton or Einstein because Physics is not a required course for US High Schools, while Biology is.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn is a must read for anyone trying to understand how a theory (like evolution) is formed and evolves. It talks in depth about how new ideas challenge and eventually overthrow the established science, the difficulties involved, and how a paradigm eventually solidifies. His examples are mostly in physics and chemistry, but evolutionary biology had a very similar path to those described: a new theory is posited with powerful explainatory powers, although it certainly can't explain everything. Eventually, it is generally recognized as the most powerful and parsimonious explaination, although significant changes are made to its initial hypotheses. Something very similar happened with Einstein and physics, and Copernicus and astronomy. Of course, the problem is not that people believe stupid things about how science works, but that people in power believe stupid things about how science works. http://xkcd.com/154/
Interestingly enough, my experience is the opposite. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that false-diety worship is a defense most often used by liberals. For example, I find it difficult to discuss global warming with liberals without veering into talking about Al Gore and his silly flawed movie. Most liberals can't name a single scientist or quote a single piece of research to defend their positions other than they heard it from Al Gore and he's a democrat so he must be right because of a republican conspiracy to supress climate research. The lack of critical thinking and the unbounded idol worship is fairly depressing. Similarly debates about the Iraq war and health care and others devolve into Michael Moore is a good guy and must be right and how MoveOn.org is a righteous organization not because their tactics are ethical, but their cause is just and how George Soros must be good to have donated so much money to the righteous cause. Liberal love to defend their idols.
Look, Al Gore and Michael Moore and George Soros may or may not shave, but they are quite flawed characters themselves regardless of their appearence. I think it's often the "liberal-elite" point of view that needs to idolize flawed heros to sooth their own self image (e.g, I'm flawed and I need flawed heros to feel better about myself, because if I'm not deep down "good" and "right", I'd have to flog myself)... These are just people after all and quite flawed. Why bother to defend them? Ignore the heros, be your own hero, defend the idea instead, what a novel concept?
Shouldn't a topic be debatable on the merits? Why do politicians, movie directors and currency traders/extorters have to be the ones to shape the debates? Shouldn't it be scientists, teachers, and engineers? If the position is defensible isn't there other evidence that is independent of the people espousing it? Isn't it worth trying to examine the other evidence? Oh wait, that would require that people care what the right answer is, rather than being cozy and self-righteous in their comfortable liberal cliques.
Why should a self-proclaimed liberal listen to anyone who claims they are a conservative because all conservatives must be wrong since they stupidly worship their talking heads. Hmm...
But don't listen to me - I'm a conservative (and a republican). And an athiest. :^)
I don't think we need to take the dark-age proponents of Creationism all that serious. We're only doing them a favour by doing so, as well as wasting time that could be better spent on conducting scientific research and teaching young people about real science.
What we should do is point the complete idiocy of their anti-scientific stance. It isn't as if you can pick and choose in science; if you accept, say, that quantum mechanics is valid, or astronomy or any of the other branches of science, then you will have a very, very hard time not accepting the theory of evolution. So if you want to reject evolution, please get rid of your computer and anything else with semiconductors in; we wouldn't have had those things without scientific research and the insight that quantum mechanics gives us. And stay out of cars and away from bridges too.
Apart from that - there is nothing in science that says there is no God or gods, science simply deals with what can be measured and which is subject to logical reasoning. And there is nothing in the Bible that claims that "this collection of stories is God's infallible truth" - that is simply a viewpoint that has been added since the time of Christ. I think what scares Creationists is that they don't understand what science is about and they basically don't understand what faith is about; and when people are scared, they become reactionary, they close their eyes and ears to shut out every part of reality that seems scary, and they become control freaks who want to decide everything. Creationists are, in a way as far from what their faith states, as you can get. They are not seeking the truth and they don't trust God; who, when you get right down to it, allegedly created this world in such a way that evolution seems to be very convincingly real.
All in all, I don't think we need to distance ourselves from Darwin or his views on evolution. If you read his works (which are available online), you will see that he is very careful in all his statements, that his reasoning is scientifically very sound and that his writing style is still very, very pleasant to read. What we should do more, all of us, is simply to stand up for science - understand it better, communicate it better.
...educators have just ditto-headed Darwin rather than challenging and testing his ideas, or adding vast new knowledge.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
i find is so funny that evolution is the soup de joir when it comes to biology. When it comes to sociology then you are a bunch of fucking communists...
You know that created equal thing is a spiritual concept not a scientific one. So why don't we just shitcan the whole idea of society and get down to some serious evolving...
http://bible.cc/isaiah/45-7.htm
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."
"I make light and create darkness. I make blessings and create disasters. I, the LORD, do all these things."
"I am the giver of light and the maker of the dark; causing blessing, and sending troubles; I am the Lord, who does all these things."
Multiple translations, but all pretty much saying the same thing. God is taking credit for creating evil.
creation science book
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "Darwinism" first appears in an article by T.H. Huxley (one of Darwin's early defenders), who refers to "what we may term the philosophical position of Darwinism." So the term "Darwinism" recognizes that Darwin's theory has philosophical consequences. The full text of the original 1864 article is online here:
http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE2/CritoS.html
But remember that Darwinists don't necessarily reflect Darwin, any more than Marxists all reflect with Marx or Christians all reflect Christ.
This whole summary is based on the supposition that people haven't even bothered to understand evolutionary theory, and view it through a lens of "belief".
There's no reason to waste time on trying to convince people when they won't take 5 minutes to understand the underlying fundamentals of your argument.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
"Darwin didn't have a true theory because the idea he had had no predictive power..."
Well, what about the prediction that there must be some mechanism of inheritance that would track with the changes in expressed traits? I mean, if one didn't know there was anything like that, predicting it would be pretty fabulously impressive!
"He wasn't aware of DNA, genes or chromosomes."
Bingo.
Obviously these guys have not spent much time looking at the politics of the religious right.
Look at civil unions. That was an attempt to rebrand gay marriage so the jesus freaks would chill. And it failed miserably. The Jesus freaks went on the fucking offensive the minute civil unions began being passed in various states.
You NEVER dilute your brand. Ever. Period.
Least of all under the delusion you can sneak things past the Jesus freaks.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
We've seen this before...
"Pro Life" means not just I support babies but "You want them all Murdered"
Me being "Pro Family" means that you are against families.
The same logic applies to other terms like "defence of marriage", "pro religious freedom" etc.
It seems that the next concept will be "Darwinism" to take up where "Intelligent Design" has failed (and it has failed, too many people on school boards have heard of "intelligent falling").
Unfortunately Machiavelli seems to have done little work on Evolutionary theory, so it will have to be called "Darwinian".
One wonders how the man's name will be dragged through the mud as this develops.
Nullius in verba
Correction-- or rather, the dinos died in the flood. Though there is one creationist museum which depicts dinosaurs on the ark and claims they died off soon afterwards...
whose only attack against evolution is an ad hominum.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Darwinism 'opened the door' for creationism? GIVE ME A BREAK! Creation is in the Bible, and has been around way before Darwinism. Darwinism gives no proof for evolution.
I compel you to name one mutation that has been observed to add information to a species. Just one! Let alone the hundreds of thousands of mutations that would be necessary to go from molecules of sludge to Human. Information doesn't come from nothing. Natural selection and mutations only work within a species. Darwin himself never talks about the origin of species in his book... only about natural selection and survival of the fittest. Evolution (a.k.a. change over time) only happens at a Micro-Evolution level. How do you explain the gain of information... for example fish to reptiles to birds... where did the information about feathers come from if mutations can build information and natural selection only reduces information.
My facts come from answersingenesis.org
.. that's because Darwinism IS a theory. Also, when many people say Creationism they are assuming Judeo/Christian/Islamic Creationism, while there are many other Creationist theories.
I thought that this nomenclature dispute was solved years ago, maybe last century:
Priest: God, our Father.
Scientist: (Mother) Nature.
Priest: Miracles of God.
Scientist: Mysteries of Nature.
Priest: Divine intervention saved us.
Scientist: Lady Luck smiled on us.
Priest: We know what is on God's mind.
Scientist: God does not play dice.
Priest: On the first day....
Scientist: In the first million years...
Priest: Peace and brotherhood.
Scientist: war is counterproductive to society.
Bottomline is that if your a good guy, whether you're religious or scientific, you'll do good things. If you're a bad guy, you'll do bad things whether you're a Pope or a dope or scientist.
The real test of a good person is whether he accepts new thoughts and new people easily, because people are essentially just thoughts in our minds.
So broadly speaking, friendly guys are more capable of gaining new scientific knowledge and unfriendly guys are incapable of accepting radical new theories.
Likewise for new friends, new lands, new customs, new people and new offices too.
The good guys will show tolerance as it is the same tolerance that one needs to a radical new theory.
The staunch disbelievers will never change nor ever befriend anyone, will never trust others and will always try to dominate and control.
The real mystery is women - they are generally accepting of others and totally poor at science. But then I'm not the only one who does nopt understand women. :-)
Ok, I'm open to suggestions like I'm a male chauvinist pig
But really, women should get into science more than into relations, we really need support other than front desk support.
The only reason why creationism exists has nothing to do with Darwin.
Creationism exists - and will exist - until we have a black and white answer about our origin.
Until then it is completely natural - can we say, human? - to have all kinds of competing theories that our - luckily - wild imagination can come up with.
I think we're all well aware that Darwin laid out most -- though not all -- of the groundwork for evolutionary science, but since then there's been 150 years of research done on the topic, so deciding that evolution is wrong because Darwin himself wasn't 100% correct is like deciding a building is ugly by standing in the basement.
But the anti-evolution fundamentalists can't quite wrap their head around that. They have a mindset where the first time someone said something, it's truth. Their dogma hasn't changed significantly in two thousand years; on the few occasions it has, it's quietly integrated into their knowledge. A prime example is how livid the church was with Galileo for daring to suggest, as others had, the heliocentric model, for dogma at the time declared the heavens to be eternal and unchanging. Now every fundamentalist can give you an impressive speech about how the precise orbits of the planets is proof of the magnificence of God. No one really remembers or cares that this wasn't always the case.
But more to the point, their obsession with Darwin is based on their obsession with authority figures and revelation. To them, truth is and always has been the Bible, and the people who wrote the Bible were, allegedly, handed this knowledge from on high. No one had to go find out what commandments and laws God wanted -- he apparently just told someone. In that same vein, the Church is the authority on interpreting the Bible or enforcing it, and so people associated with the Church are also authorities. A fundamentalist's entire worldview is predicated on these revealed truths from authorities.
They therefore assume that everyone else works on this same principle -- that authority figures hand out information which is either true or false, and if they can show that person, or anything he said, to be in error, then they've destroyed his authority. To them, the information is only as good as the authority of the person who offered it, because that person's authority is the final product and the information is really only secondary. If Paul was just some guy nobody would care what he said, but because he was supposedly in touch with the ultimate authority, his words are recorded and now we all know what he said.
They don't realise or don't care that science is done by incorporating the knowledge of dozens of disciplines and thousands of people who worked on the problem before, and that knocking one of them down doesn't affect the final product because the product is not the authority of the scientist.
So, by attacking Darwin they hope to make him look foolish or wrong, and if they can do that, then absolutely everything built upon his work is also foolish or wrong. That's the mindset of a fundamentalist -- the mindset of anyone who believes in revelation over investigation.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
I think that I can give you reasons for bothering.
First of all, the battle is better described as a a battle between creationism and empiricism.
Many fundamentalists are driven to suppress ideas that conflict with their religious belief-set. Evolutionary biology, along with geology and astronomy, have been challenged because they conflict with a religious belief-set. Fundamentalists are threatened by the thought process that spawns those conflicts--the scientific method. A lasting victory over heresy depends upon the suppression of the scientific method. Otherwise, all sorts of pesky ideas will keep sprouting up. The fundamentalists want to rip out the roots of heresy--and empiricism (including freedom of scientific thought)--is the root of scientific heresy.
NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
If you care about the future of science after your lifetime, the battle against empiricism and free-ranging scientific freedom, then you must care about the battle the creationists are waging. Forget the rigid ignorant people with whom discussion or argument is entirely futile. But be concerned about the children--future scientists and supporters of scientists that need to be educated.
If you only care about the development of science within your lifetime, then the battle against the creationists is still worthwhile. Creationism is awful because it is an all out attack on empiricism, and empiricism is the foundation of all science. The suppression of empiricism and free scientific thought can happen in your lifetime.
Behe's thesis in Darwin's Black Box was that systems which would fall apart if one component were removed could not have been produced by evolutionary processes. This is not true. (One might think Behe would have done a bit more testing before staking his claim.)
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Stark has been in office since Nixon.. 1973. He is riding incumbent effect on a seat that is not under real contention. And he switched in a district that is known for tolerance. He is on the ways and means comittee.. he brings in the money. I'm betting a bunch of senators are closet agnostics/athiests/bunnykillers/homosexuals/bdsm fetishists/johns but closet doesnt count. Show me an athiest being freshly elected to House or senate in Texas-Arkansas-Missisippi-Alabama-Georgia-Louisiana-or the Carolinas.. Then I will think that the bias is lowering. As it is.. Stark is 77 and might not be too worried about retiring. Storm
It is a good prediction becasue.
However, until you can make testable prediction about God that doesn't fail, you really can't use the same logic to 'prove' god exists.
It was a good prediction at the time. Of course sicne then there has been several predictions using fossil records and geology.
SO why would god make a fossil at a specific depth for a creature that is never seen?
Of course, this discussion has NOTHING to do with weather or not god exists, only that bible literalism is wrong.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The misconception that Prof Safina rails against is due to the vulgar notion of Darwinism which is no more like what Darwin wrote about than does "begging the question" have anything to do with its common misusage.
I've got a theory too! "God" created humans. Ergo God is both the mother and father of humanity. Ergo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAZTLVJSlNw
I think that religious people refer to 'hope' out of fear (maybe subconsciously). You and I may be OK with acting civilly for our own sake, with no other compulsion than our own sense of what is right and just. And that may (just a theory - putting it out there) just scare the religious silly.
THEY have an omniscient, omnipresent 'father' figure lurking about, watching their every move, waiting to burn them in Hell for Eternity if they get out of line. That is what they believe, and maybe, in the dark corners of their own souls, what they NEED in order to act civilly. That's all they've ever known. And they think everyone else 'needs' that as well, to make them act civilly. Again. maybe only on a subconscious level.
And without it? If no one 'believed' as they do? Chaos - anarchy. Terror in the streets. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria!
You get the idea. If 'father' isn't "going to tan your hide when he gets home tonight", what motivation do the kids have to not misbehave? We don't have a 'daddy' to keep us in line, which may make us scary in a way.
I know next to nothing about Feyerabend, but I do know that he advocated the teaching of creationism--not, it seems, because he was keen on Jesus, but because he was just that postmodern.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
We could end this whole evolution debate in a generation or two if the creationists would just put their money (lives?) where their mouths are and not use anything that has been developed using science. They'd still be around but they would be alot easier to ignore.
The problem with religion, science and other forms of popular thought is that once they are in the hands of the massives, they cease to be a fluid body of knowledge that can be shared, experienced and grown, into something more formulated that can be readily grasped, identified with and pointed to as an authority.
People who proclaim Darwinism blindly with no personal investigation of the theory and associated facts have the same affliction as a neo-conservative who blindly states that the Earth is 100,000 years old and a large military with an aggressive foreign policy is the only way to protect America.
You mean theory of evoultion is makign no cents?! Huh?
"explaining them" means finding a model that describes and predicts their behaviour (e.g. the formulas for gravity). ID doesn't even attempt that, it does try to make claims about the underlying mechanics though.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
People missunderstand what genes, dna, rna and replication are and what data is actually inside. Dna isn't just a switch that is on or off. You don't just turn dna for 'eyes' off and a baby is born without eyes. It just doesn't work that way. The human software coding is the most advance biological software out there that we know of. More advance then all systems running in all the world all at the same time in a mass of 180lbs. It's almost inconceivable how complex it just is. Read up on ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heredity )
Remember, look at medical pharma industry. The area of study is prolly the most advanced in the entire world and they have yet come to cure some of the simplest bacteria, virii, etc. Modern medican today, is almost entirely based on penicillin, a drug discovered (not invented) some 100+ years ago. see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_penicillin).
The issue is, dna, junk dna and the other building block are showing more to be RANGE based along with TRAIT based. I could go on and on, but the point is. Do not expect evolution or anything to show up in the next 100+ years to detail how life exists.
Why do we still have the "lesser", "older" species?
I've not heard a real explanation to this point. I am not referring to the process of natural selection, simply the origin of species. Two completely different theories and ideas.
Why do we still have fish, primates, birds? We do we not have half human-ape looking hybrids? Why are there no hybrid species of other types?
Not a troll, a genuine question. I am a spiritual creationist, my core beliefs are "neo" "Christian" ['follower of the way', anyone? I despise the word 'Christian' which was never intended to be used as such], and I do take tidbits and input from all sources in this walk of life, including philosophies and input from many different religions world-wide.
Additionally and thankfully, I have a very open mind regarding scientific thought and theory. I do however, think that it's possible modern science's "scale" is off when it comes to judging how long the universe and Earth have existed.
-Simple small things like the scale of time it takes to create coal can be sped up, or slowed down. This has been simulated many times in lab conditions, and they even found fossilized dinosaur footprints within coal in a mine. If it takes coal "millions of years" to form, (all the time,) then said footprint should not remain.
-The speed of light is not a constant, it is affected by things such as space-gas and nebulas, so in effect we have no true idea how "far" things in space are from us if this is remotely true.
-The amount of time it takes to petrify an object is by far, not, a constant, as shown even in modern day broken dam floods, etc.
-The amount of dust on the moon was about an inch or two, not several feet of dust as astronomers predicted, thus creating the long lunar module stilts for.
-Sea life has been found in, decidedly, un-sea-like areas, such as the grand canyon, within all layers of soil, much more so than "river" or fresh water dwelling organisms.
-Carbon dating has been shown to be drastically affected by simple things, such as smoke from a fire.
In the end, re Darwin, it seems to be a no-brainer to me that natural selection itself exists, but the fact that all species are, for the lack of a better description, largely and plainly definitive between themselves, is compelling to me.
Mind you, I am not an expert on the subject of ID, but every proponent I have run into never seems to claim anything. They just say "Evolution is just a theory, here is my theory. Now you must teach it in your schools." Or words to that effect. Frankly, I wish they would claim something specific. It would be a whole lot easier to invalidate their theory.
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I study physics and almost everything I come across is named after someone. Newtonian physics, Planck's constant, Schrödinger's equation, Bose-Einstein condensate, and so on and so forth. No one takes that as an invitation to play the man either.
As said before, the kind of crap from the summary is something you find only in the US. For starters, when people here in Europe hear Darwinism they don't assume that nothing's changed since Darwin, so effectively the word here is equated to neo-Darwinism anyway, and secondly no one here would read anything more into that than that Darwin thought up the basic principle. No one here thinks that it means that Darwin is taken as a final authority, and no one thinks it would damage the theory one bit if the man were to be attacked. That the word Darwinism is used so often is mainly a tribute to his influence. Before Darwin, biology as we know it essentially didn't exist.
Oh, and one more thing... I think it would be an extremely bad idea to change terminology to accommodate the creationists. It wouldn't help one bit, since it isn't the name they dislike, and hence it would result in a permanent state of flux in the meaning of words, which only plays in their hand, since it would be a hindrance to rational thought.
Makes a perfect case for why Darwin should be forgotten if we are to make inroads in the fight against religion.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Behe's thesis in Darwin's Black Box was that systems which would fall apart if one component were removed could not have been produced by evolutionary processes.
More accurately, he claims that IC systems derived from evolutionary process is statistically unlikely. And while that simulation can make an IC system, it has a few biases.
A high-scoring algorithm continues to contribute to the gene pool until more effective algorithms displace it. Humans, in contrast, can only contribute for three generations (or four, in the case of virile males.), assuming 1 generation is 20 years. Other animals have a higher generations-to-lifespan ratio, but it isn't infinite.
Similar to the issue about not dieing, humans and animals get old. They slow down. They don't heal as fast as they once did. They acquire life-long injuries and afflictions (polio, damaged limbs...). In this simulation, there is no such thing as a virile young adult with a hereditary predisposition towards sterility in middle age (or an accident arising from being an idiot), which would limit them to a single reproductive generation.
Without the Java app to interpret, those codes would be meaningless; and the Java app was not a product of darwinian evolution. Biological evolution is similarly implausible. DNA goes through a fantastically complex process to duplicate a thread, and that process had to be in place alongside a DNA strand that could code a duplicate DNA interpreter as well as duplicate itself. Writing quines is complicated enough. But a quine that is self-compiling and self-executing? Generated at random in a system that is passively hostile? Please.
The problem is simple - it *is* basically Darwinian evolution. Everything else that's been discovered still fundamentally agrees with his work.
Even Einstein was far more standing on the shoulders of his predecessors than Darwin was - Darwin didn't simply start a field of science, he overturned an entire doctrine in the same blow.
If Copernicus had writ out Einsteinian relativity as a cohesive whole overturning church doctrine with various predictions some of which weren't experimentally verifiable for over a century, yet stayed in line with his basic theory, that would be comparable to Darwin.
So, yeah, it is basically Darwinian Evolutionary theory, in a way that only Newtonian Physics comes close to rivaling.
Besides - the man was on a five year mission to explore the strange New World, and came back with a new theory of biology, almost completely overturning the churches stranglehold on what was 'goodthink'.
That *has* to be cool enough to get your name pinned to the damn theory for all time - {G}!
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
There is no such thing as the "Theory of Evolution". Rather the evidence for evolution having occurred in the past and ongoing today is vast and undeniable. The theory here is Natural Selection. The word "theory" also doesn't mean what people think it does. A theory is not a synonym for "hypothesis", but rather a complete and coherent explanation of all aspects of the available data that can be used to make predictions about the world. Natural Selection is the glue that ties our understanding of biology together. To reject Natural Selection is reject everything we know about the world around us.
Darwinism gives no proof for evolution.
Um, what does this even mean? I can't parse this sentence in a way that becomes coherent. You seem to a) think that "Darwinism" is a meaningful term and that b) it is distinct from "evolution." This leaves me slightly confused. Although given the later material in your post it does provide a nice example to support the contention of many posters here that "Darwinism" as a term is used primarily by creationists. Incidentally, science doesn't care at all about "proof." Nothing in science is every proven. Proof is for alcohol and mathematicians. The rest of your post seems to be a mix of a word salad and a Gish gallop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Gish ). Nevertheless, I'll try to take a look at it.
I compel you to name one mutation that has been observed to add information to a species. Just one!
First, I don't think you mean "compel" but rather "challenge" or "request." Second, I think don't mean "information to a species" but rather information to a specific genome. See the difference? Next, we come to the issue of information. Unfortunately, it turns out that information is very hard to precisely define. There are two definitions which are most common among mathematicians. These are Shannon information and Kolmogorov complexity. Under both of these measures, increasing chromosome count or simple gene duplication will often increase the amount of information contained in the genome. Gene duplication is quite common and has been frequently observed in many different species. Now, you may have an intuition for what you mean by information that doesn't include gene duplication. Now, this may be an example where your intuition simply doesn't meet the relevant math. That's ok because we have many examples that are unambiguous increases information. One example is given at http://mbe.oupjournals.org/cgi/reprint/15/8/931.pdf where after a series of genes duplicated they then further mutated. Now, you might say that this doesn't count because you really didn't want information added. You really meant examples of beneficial mutations. Well we're in luck because we have lots of those also. For example, we have bacteria which have evolved to be able to eat nylon. And that's one of many examples.
Let alone the hundreds of thousands of mutations that would be necessary to go from molecules of sludge to Human.
You seem to be confusing a few different issues here. But in brief, science doesn't work this way. For that matter, neither does every day reasoning. Consider the following analogy:You come to my house as a guest for dinner and I put out a cooked chicken. You ask me where the chicken came from, I tell you that I bought it at the local store. You ask further and I look at the label and see that it came from a neighboring state before that. You don't then ask for a detailed list of how the chicken got from the other state to here. The fact that I don't have a video of the chicken being brought from that state to here is not a reason to reject this narrative. We do the best we can and we try as hard as we can. But not having a complete list of every single mutation is not an argument against evolution.
Natural selection and mutations only work within a species.
Wait, what? I thought there were no mutations adding information. Please make up your mind. Do mutations not work at all or not work within species? And what do you mean by "work" anyhow?
Darwin himself never talks about the origin of species in his book... only about natural selection and survival of the fittest.
Ok, this is simply false. Go read Origin of Species. It has that title for a reason. Seriously, go read the book. Second, even if he had never talked about speciation it would be irrelevant to whether or not it happens. Biology is not a religion which worships
Darwins theory has been disproved. http://ldolphin.org/wmwilliams.html http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/origin_of_species_01.html
OK- so his birthday is this Thursday (Feb 12th) -
He'll be 200. Almost as old as some of those Galapagos tortoises that are gradually becoming extinct.
Is this just some cheap warm up by smug slashdotters? Go back to Dover, PA, guys! BOOOOO!
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Happy Birthday from me, Charles!
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- aqk
F U
Genesis: The Evolution of Biology is a great book on the history of biology, pre-Darwinians like Lamarck to today's (scientific) cracks showing in the Darwinian model.
Um, what does this even mean? I can't parse this sentence in a way that becomes coherent. You seem to a) think that "Darwinism" is a meaningful term and that b) it is distinct from "evolution." This leaves me slightly confused. Although given the later material in your post it does provide a nice example to support the contention of many posters here that "Darwinism" as a term is used primarily by creationists. Incidentally, science doesn't care at all about "proof." Nothing in science is every proven. Proof is for alcohol and mathematicians.
Ok, you certainly are a self prescribed smart guy. Congrats on your self esteem.
Proof - Any factual evidence that helps to establish the truth of something.
I'm still waiting for your proof... looks like I'll have to wait quite long period (hopefully not millions of years) for your proof while you debate my grammar and meaning of words.
First, I don't think you mean "compel" but rather "challenge" or "request." Second, I think don't mean "information to a species" but rather information to a specific genome.
Ok, thanks for making my point above. You knew what I meant, yet you waste my time explaining all this. Thanks buddy!
Well we're in luck because we have lots of those also. For example, we have bacteria which have evolved to be able to eat nylon. And that's one of many examples.
Oh, it's nice that you believe the things that are spoon fed into your brain. There are plenty of reasons that example is not a case of evolution... Nylon Eating Bacteria Explained I'm still waiting for a solid example... since you claim to have lots of examples, can you please find a better one?
But not having a complete list of every single mutation is not an argument against evolution.
I don't want a list of every single mutation... all I want is one example mutation that fits your theory. Just one valid mutation that creates something new that didn't already exist in the genetic makeup of the previous organism.
Wait, what? I thought there were no mutations adding information. Please make up your mind. Do mutations not work at all or not work within species? And what do you mean by "work" anyhow?
Mutations are all around us. In fact, some mutations are even good mutations (as they can get rid of bad information). My claim was that mutations have never added additional information, and they don't... they only re-order information, or more often than not, cause a loss of information. And never could they cause a change from one "kind" to another. They can go so far as to make part of one species not able to breed with other members of the same species due to the loss of information necessary for breeding. For example, one study gave evidence that sockeye salmon introduced into Lake Washington, USA, between 1937 and 1945 had split into two reproductively isolated populations (i.e., two separate species) in fewer than 13 generations (a maximum of 56 years). But they did not grow legs, nor grow feathers, or any sort of such thing...they don't have the information in their genes to do so. It just wont happen...ever.
Ok, this is simply false. Go read Origin of Species. It has that title for a reason. Seriously, go read the book. Second, even if he had never talked about speciation it would be irrelevant to whether or not it happens. Biology is not a religion which worships Darwin. He got quite a bit wrong (for example, he really didn't understand genetics or the possibility of something like neutral drift). That's ok. Science isn't tied down to the details of what Darwin wrote.
Ok, I'm not sure you have read the book. I will admit that I haven't read the book... but please, feel free to quote me some of the parts that talk about the Origin of Species (minus the ti
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Most creationists will agree that evolution on the micro scale does occur. You don't need to be a scientist to understand how breeding has been used for horses, dogs, food grains etc.
Macro-evolution, on the other hand, is what is being debated.
Now, evolutionists may come out and say that macro evolution and micro evolution follow one and the same process and cannot really be distinguished.
But this is an assertion which must be proven.
Also, you imply that the religious did not have anything whatsoever to do with advancing science. Do you really think that all of science only evolved after Darwin? It may be a good idea to read up about many of the great scientists - not all of them were atheists.. many were deeply religious. Examples include Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur ..
Something else that you seem to miss is that the ancients knew about seasons - actually, they had very accurate knowledge of the cosmos and were able to track the path of the sun and the stars very accurately. Just read up about the Inca, the Maya and the Egyptian pyramids. Also, read up on the temples in Asia and how many of them were really astronomical observatories.
Nobody in the scientific world even TALKS about "Darwinism" - that's a creationist term. The idea that scientists make Darwin into a "sacred fetish" is a strawman that fundamentalist whackos made up entirely. Scientists didn't "turn Darwin into an 'ism'", so what the hell is the author even talking about? Oh, right, he's a concern troll!
An "ism" is an ideology. Real scientists don't operate under *isms*, they work under hypotheses and working models.
Anyone who purports to support "Darwinism" (or neo-Darwinism or any derivative) is NOT a scientist. They may be wrapping themselves in a labcoat in an attempt to gain credibility but this is pseudoscience at best.
The concept of "isms" is a Liberal Arts concept. The entire idea of "Darwinism" is an Arts concept imposed on a scientific debate by a collection of Arts Academics who specialize in "Science in Society", "History of Science", etc. These people may be bright people, but they are not scientists.
The key problem with "isms" in science is that it imports an ideological viewpoint, which by definition, involves the loss of objectivity. Anyone who has subscribed to an "ism" has lost the objectivity necessary to properly evaluate their data, and will be hopelessly overcome with observer bias.
"It's as if, since 1860, scientists have just ditto-headed Darwin rather than challenging and
testing his ideas, or adding vast new knowledge."
That's baloney. Every competent biologist knows that Darwin's ideas were strongly challenged and not fully accepted until the late 1930s. I haven't read Safina's article, but if he's saying stuff like this, his audience is obviously not evolutionary biologists like me.
Joel
Caveat: I'm a scientific agnostic.
Way to get a dig in on Protestants
My understanding was that only _some_ protestants take the Bible literally. Other protestants simply don't believe they need a priest to do the interpretation for them. There's a world of difference here, and to lump all protestants in together as Literalists is to undermine what the whole reformation was about.
Unlike Catholicism, where to be Catholic you are Roman Catholic (hmm... apparently not), to be a Protestant means you may be United Church, Salvation Army, Mormon, or any of a large number of wildly different denominations of Christianity. (I originally included Anglican until I went fact checking)
-- Warning: Complete Aside Follows --
This is somewhat akin to the difference between being Christian and (apparently) being Catholic. As I recently had it explained to me, Catholic's do not see themselves as being Christian, partly since they were here first and partly since they use 'Christian' to mean 'other non-Catholic follower of Christ'. Those of us on the outside of the whole mess tend to see all followers of Christ as Christian, hence Catholics, Anglicans and others are Christian but they are not Protestant nor are they Jewish. This does seem to be the more useful use of Christian except that it seems to offend (some) Catholics.
What killed it for me was that I couldn't lump Jews & Christians in together by refering to them as followers of the Judeo-Christian mythos. Then to top it all off Muslims enter the mix and don't want to be categorized as following the same deity as Christians and Jews. (Which to be fair but the time that much translation and interpretation has gone on, the observed aspects of the deity are wildly different, even though according to the texts the deity is Itself the same). At least they can agree on one thing, "If you're not a follow of my sect, you're a heretic." (even so, they each treat heretics differently)
-Anon
Any single prediction doesn't amount to much, but evolution has made endless predictions that have turned out correct.
For example dinosaur-bird intermediate forms were predicted well before the discovery of feathered dinosaur fossils and archaeopteryx and other fossils. (Archaeopteryx has feathers and wings, but has dinosaur claws at the ends of it's arms and dinosaur head/jaw/teeth and dinosaur feet and dinosaur spine and dinosaur breastbone and on an on and on - in almost every characteristic it FAILS to have any of the defining traits of birds other than having feathers and wings. It's a dinosaur with feathers & wings, and otherwise completely unbirdlike.)
Evolution's primary aspect and primary sweeping prediction is the tree of common descent. Thousands if not millions of DNA analyses have been done across countless species, and every single one of them confirms the evolutionary tree of common descent relationship between species with the same Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt certainty that court room DNA analysis can and does prove the family tree descent relationships between people Beyond-Any-Reasonable-Doubt. Way above and beyond the "convict someone of rape and murder and fry them in the electric chair" level of proof.
And then there's my personal favorite. There is a significant chunk of the tree of life in phylum foraminifera where we have an absolutely continuous and complete fossil record spanning thousands of species over a hundred million plus years. Not merely a complete sequence of every transitional species, but a hyper-continuous record of the evolution of entire populations and their transitional forms ALONG each individual species split. For most living things it is extremely rare and random for it to leave a fossil at all, and even if it does leave a fossil it is extremely rare and random for us to happen to dig it up. Foraminifera are a special and perfect case because both of those problems vanish. Foraminifera are really really tiny animals that live in the ocean by the trillions, and every single day millions and millions of them die and continuously rain down on the deep cold dark inert sea floor. They have mineral skeletons called tests, and these tests become ideal fossils continuously laid down and continuously layered in the deep cold dark inert sediment slowly accumulating on the sea floor. A limitless supply of perfectly layered perfectly preserved fossils. In the 1970's oil crunch we came up with new deep sea drilling technology to explore for oil, exploration that started bringing up long sediment drill cores from the sea floor. Drill cores that were incidentally loaded with these tiny foraminifera fossils by the thousands.
This one chunk of the fossil record alone is enough to absolutely prove the basic fact of evolution. An absolutely perfect continuous complete record showing exactly how populations can and repeatedly did diversify into new species. A perfect record spanning thousands of species, and tracing diverse living species back to their common ancestor.
It is as much absolute proof as a perfect complete fossil record tracing whales and humans and dogs and cats and other animals back to their mammal common ancestor, except tiny foram animals living in the ocean are not nearly as glamorous and well known as mammal and dinosaur fossils. The only "problem" is that your typical Joe The Plumber doesn't know a foram from a hole in the wall. But the fact that most people have never heard of these tiny animals living in the ocean does not diminish the scientific significance of these fossils. They show with absolute proof that a significant chunk of life on earth did evolve exactly as evolution claims, and by any sane reasonable standard it shows that the rest of the fossil record really is the random spotty gappy record of a continuous evolutionary tree that it appears to be and that scientists say it is. That fossil find really are random picks dicovered out of continuous lines of transitional forms.
And this perfect continuous complete chunk of fossil record shows exactly what evolution predicts. It shows a common ancestor branching and diversifying in a tree of new species, linking together diverse living species together is a single family tree of common descent.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You next attempt to construct a straw man thusly:
I imply no such thing. Begin again. Free your mind.
Then you suggest:
I find it strange that you have an interest in this, but fail to see how this evidence directly challenges your primitive creationist world view. "The ancients" as you call them "knew about the seasons" because they had astronomers. They knew a lot more than the seasons. Any primitive person paying attention would figure out seasons. Knowing that you can plant and harvest, and when to plant, however, that takes a little more thought, and that is most likely the birth of science.
Early science may have been entangled with various local superstitions, as some astronomical knowledge was entangled with astrology, but to be most useful it must shed superstition.
Consider the Antikythera Device which demonstrates not only advanced astronomy but mechanical engineering knowledge which was lost, and remained unsurpassed for hundreds of years.
Science clearly has deep roots, deeper even than Christianity. Why didn't you cite any examples of scientists who were religious but not Christian? Possibly because the intellectual tradition of Christianity largely ignores the non-Christian and typically conflates religion and Christianity. They are not the same. You should "read up" on non-Christian scientists. Start here:
Lost History: the Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists
Consider also the Archimedes Palimpsest. The great works of ancient scientists were considered valueless by Christians for hundreds of years. In a bit of irony, one such work has been revealed by modern science, hidden beneath the superstition painted over it. The paper was more valuable to the Christians than the knowledge on it. (This is an important fact tossed around as a throw away observation in most accounts of this palimpsest. However, it's worthy of some consideration. Christianity participated in and contributed to a collapse of the scientific understanding of the world. The paper was so valuable to them most likely because they couldn't easily make more themselves. That's how deep the collapse really was.) Thankfully the obsessive monks didn't burn it for warmth, and rather scraped it off and painted over it -- leaving the tiny ghost images of the original text below, for advanced X-Ray imaging to reveal, centuries later.
In fairness, two observations. Firstly, Christianity isn't the only religion which feels threatened by science (aka objective reality, aka factual truth which can be verified by observation). This seems to be a pretty common characteristic of most religion. Consider Scientology, which seems to be downright paranoid about outsider's attempts to learn about it. Modern Islamic fundamentalists like the Taliban and Al Quaeda have demonstrated that knowledge and science are their greatest enemy, scientists, doctors, and teachers are to be killed, schools converted to instruments of their own particular religious dogma.
Secondly, Christianity isn't a mon
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Ok, you certainly are a self prescribed smart guy. Congrats on your self esteem. Proof - Any factual evidence that helps to establish the truth of something. I'm still waiting for your proof... looks like I'll have to wait quite long period (hopefully not millions of years) for your proof while you debate my grammar and meaning of words.
I haven't criticized your grammar. It wouldn't matter. But when discussing issues like this it is important that everyone is on the same page. The definition you have given "Any factual evidence that helps to establish the truth of something" is pretty broad. If that's all you want one can easily list many pieces of evidence.
For our purposes let us define evolution as all life arising from a common ancestor or small set of near identical common ancestors with the main impetuses for variation being mutation and the primary selection mechanism being natural selection.
Aside from directly observed evolution, we also have tremendous amounts of evidence for common descent. Life on earth forms a nested hierarchy classified under the Linnean system (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species) or even if one doesn't use that precise breakdown still has an easy nested hierarchy. This hierarchy can be established through either morphological data (what living things look like) or through genotypical data. A nested hierarchy is exactly what one would expect if evolution is true. Moreover, it is not at all what one would expect from a designer. Designers don't make things in nested hierarchies, they build things with frequent borrowing from design or another, they combine parts from different designs and do all sorts of similar issues. If one for example tried to make a nestered hierarchy to classify cars one would have much more trouble. Unless one is willing to posit a designer that is deliberately deceptive the conclusion must stand.
This is but one of many pieces of evidence for evolution with common descent. To list just another major "proof", one can look at endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). Here's a very rough outline: retroviruses are a type of virus which reproduces by inserting its genetic material into your own DNA and then tricking your cells into reproducing the that genetic material many times. I'm glossing over the details, these viruses actually store their genetic material as RNA which they encode into DNA in a clever way that we don't need to get into. However, sometimes the retrovirus messes up. In these cases, the retrovirus succeeds in inserting its genetic material into the host's DNA but fails to get the host to then duplicate it. When this occurs, the cell now has the virus's genetic material permanently added into its own DNA. When such viruses infect cells which produce sperm or egg, the result is that the retrovirus DNA is now permanently part of the offspring. Such recorded retroviruses are known as endogenous retroviruses or ERVs. Now, here's a curious fact: there are a variety of ERVs shared by all humans. Many of those are shared with other primates and many other mammals. These are the same ERVs showing up in the exact same spots in the genomes. And simply by looking at shared ERVs you again get a nested hierarchy. There's no hypothesis that explains this other than the mammals having a common ancestor.
Oh, it's nice that you believe the things that are spoon fed into your brain. There are plenty of reasons that example is not a case of evolution... Nylon Eating Bacteria Explained I'm still waiting for a solid example... since you claim to have lots of examples, can you please find a better one?
Ok. First of all, quoting an AIG article with no explanation isn't a rebuttal to a claim. In fact, the AIG article doesn't claim that this wasn't a beneficial mutation. All that article claims is that they think it is evidence that the bacteria was designed to be able to mutate in certain ways. That's still a beneficial mutation. But nevertheless I will humor you. Another
The Doctor replies: The cartoon (the original is now locked behind a paid subscription to Doonesbury)
Hilarious punchline!
... and then they built the supercollider.
Does this mean we should change the name of all other things named after people? Will Alzheimer's be the first to go? It was named after a psychiatrist but we don't all run around praising the man for everything that has come from his discovery. It's easy to find blame in anything if you're looking hard enough. As Shakespeare once said, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
And the first hit is http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2809619,00.html and reads:
"Council of Europe: Keep Creationism Out of Science Classes"
I guess they have seen what happens elsewhere
That what you imply -- namely, that we act as if we "believed in it" -- is how Creationists see our views, because doctrines is all they know.
They can't imagine us actually thinking and questioning our theories, because they can't do it themselves.
They came up with the term "Darwinism" to exactly strengthen their twisted view of us.
And you fell for it. Not us.
So go home, think about what you have done, and expect no food on the table this evening.
Tomorrow you can come back, and tell us what you have learned from this.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
More accurately, he claims that IC systems derived from evolutionary process is statistically unlikely. And while that simulation can make an IC system, it has a few biases.
I don't think you were watching it properly.
The most successful algorithm doesn't seem to die.
A high-scoring algorithm continues to contribute to the gene pool until more effective algorithms displace it. Humans, in contrast, can only contribute for three generations (or four, in the case of virile males.), assuming 1 generation is 20 years. Other animals have a higher generations-to-lifespan ratio, but it isn't infinite.
From the linked page: "Reproduction. Those individuals remaining after selection become the parents of the next generation. The individuals wiped out by selection are replaced by mutated copies of the remaining individuals, or by crossover of two of the remaining individuals." A combination of sexual and asexual reproduction is used; if you think that restricting the system to put a maximum lifespan on individuals would make a difference, feel free to tweak the code and try it. But don't make the assertion unless you can back it up; it's just hand-waving.
The generations don't age
Similar to the issue about not dieing, humans and animals get old. They slow down. They don't heal as fast as they once did. They acquire life-long injuries and afflictions (polio, damaged limbs...). In this simulation, there is no such thing as a virile young adult with a hereditary predisposition towards sterility in middle age (or an accident arising from being an idiot), which would limit them to a single reproductive generation.
Why is this relevant? It's a bit of complexity papered over in the simulation because it's not directly relevant to the question of whether or not genetic algorithms can generate irreducibly complex systems.
Replication/Reproduction cycle facilitated by system and was not produced in an evolutionary manner.
Without the Java app to interpret, those codes would be meaningless; and the Java app was not a product of darwinian evolution. Biological evolution is similarly implausible. DNA goes through a fantastically complex process to duplicate a thread, and that process had to be in place alongside a DNA strand that could code a duplicate DNA interpreter as well as duplicate itself. Writing quines is complicated enough. But a quine that is self-compiling and self-executing? Generated at random in a system that is passively hostile? Please.
Again, how does this relate to the proposition in question--whether or not a genetic algorithm can produce an irreducibly-complex system as Behe defined it? The system is far, far simpler than an actual organism, but the properties it's designed to study are emulated faithfully--non-random selection on a set of randomly-varying replicators.
You might as well claim that because a human wrote the program, it was intelligently designed and is therefore not capable of showing anything at all about evolution. (Hey, it's been claimed.)
One of your criticisms is unsupported, and the other two are irrelevant. Would you like to try again?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
But this is an assertion which must be proven.
If you're looking for a mathematical proof, you won't find one. Or is that the point?
Theories require evidence, and we are standing on a planet that is full of it. A lot of it is discussed in this thread. Still more is discussed in pretty much every biology textbook you will find.
What is your evidentiary requirement? Because I guarantee you that it has been met, should you care to start reading. Wherever you have set the bar, it has long since been passed.
Actually, here's a proof:
Macro-evolution and micro-evolution are the same thing. The prefix simply denotes a time scale. If you have one then you by necessity have the other. You admit the former, so you must also admit the latter. QED.
Darwin himself was quite religious, too. From what little I've read, it seems he never gave up on the existence of a god, though his views on religion changed radically. The fact of the matter is, there is little reason science and religion have to be at loggerheads with each other; each seeks truth in a different way.
I believe God logged off as SysAdmin about 10,000 years ago. He/She is currently taking a day off. He/She will most certainly be pissed when logged back in.