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Scientists Take Charles Darwin On the Road
Hugh Pickens writes "A team of evolutionary scientists recently traveled to the heart of America, visiting rural schools and communities in Nebraska, Montana, and Virginia to share their excitement about science on the birthday of Charles Darwin, and were overwhelmed with the graciousness, enthusiasm and sincerity of the teachers, school administration and particularly the students that hosted them. 'Over the course of our visits, the questions we received from students were thoughtful and founded in sheer curiosity about the science we presented,' writes MacClain. 'Indeed, the questions were the most exciting part of our collective visits.' Another purpose of the trip was to introduce people to the diverse types of research scientists do, open students' minds to the possibilities of careers in science, and offer an alternative to stereotypes of science and scientists in general. Some criticize the Darwin Day Road Show for being nothing more than a 'Darwinist ministry,' others for it not being more explicit in its discussion of evolution and Darwin, but with this year's success, there will be a Darwin Day Road Show 2012 and the National Center for Science Education is planning to hit all 50 states by 2015. MacClain says the team has found a middle ground that allows scientists to stop communicating at and start communicating with the public. 'It reminds us all that interactions between science and society need not be contentious. At its heart, science is about questions, and we all naturally ask them.'"
Sounds like it was a scientific carnival. Was there a pool where you could throw a ball at a target to drop a scientist and get schooled on the physics behind all of it with a slow-motion replay? That would be pretty cool. brb going to question reality again.
So. Who else clicked on the article to see if the guys name was 'John'?
Can a scientist be not "evolutionary"? Can you be an "creationist scientist"? Is creationism even considered "science"?
Darwin is "wrong" about evolution in the same way Isaac Newton is "wrong" about physics, you stupid troll.
The monkeys don't want to acknowledge that they share a common ancestor with you either.
Anything that helps put creationism back in its place- as a fairy story told to and by those who have a hard time with the scientific process...
Or anything much more advanced than 2+2 (which equals 4 for any Creationists reading this.)
Getting kids excited about actual science and rational though processes is a good thing. And needed to help counter what some "people" (note the loose use of the term) try to pass off as science- creationism, "Intelligent Design" and the Flat Earth Society.
Hell, maybe they can get some adults interested in rational thought too!
Linux computers, watercooled, photography
What a ludicrous and false statement. Darwin's theory was incomplete, but as Stephen Jay Gould, in the large picture it was pretty spot on. Darwin lacked a theory of heredity, to be sure, but then again modern physics lacks a demonstrable quantum theory of gravity. By your tortured logic, that would make QM and GR wrong.
What I think is that you're just a fucking moron who makes grand proclamations like this, but, in fact you're just an ignoramus.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I guess you didn't get the memo, He's got invited to a golf game with Xenu and the Holy Trinity last minute and had to cancel that other thing.
Troll, but not stupid.
"when biology was a backwater field designed for heterosexual people on a man-only ship crew" is actually a pretty funny lure.
Yes, Biology is hard science. I recommend reading 'Your Inner Fish' to understand why. Evolution - as a good scientific theory - is able to make predictions. Based on those Tiktaalik was found. What is Tiktaalik? Well, Google it and be amazed.
The religous nuts run the place.
Religous nuts scare me... They'll be the end of the country.
Seriously, I know it may sound a bit selfish, but here in Texas is where the curriculum of much of the nation is decided due to our huge purchasing power of school books. The publishers do not bend to the will of the smaller states as readily, and they must buy the books that are available from these publishers (personally, give me reprints from the 50s -- they're not nearly as dumbed down). California gets it, last I heard they were banning books that had the Texas curriculum in them.
The problem is that here in Texas religious zealots are pushing to get "intelligent design" taught instead of the Science of evolution; Currently I.D. is being pushed as an alternative, with the hope that teachers can be found that will only want to teach one alternative -- I.D.
The children will not learn without exposure to the scientific information -- I used only MS OSs since MS DOS 3.1 because I did not know about Linux! No one was there to teach me that I had other options than MacOS or Windows.
Texas is the battleground that must be won to keep evolution in many schools across the country.
A huge problem is that many true I.D. believers can not be reasoned with, many are irrational and have no concept of science.
I once showed one of these fundamentalists a well known experiment I was running where each generation of mouse, at 4 weeks old (the brink of maturity for this breed), I put through a chute and if the mouse's tail got caught by the small rear sliding door, I would remove that mouse from the gene pool into a separate habitat. Each generation I shortened the measuring cell's length a bit.
I pointed to the mice in the two different environments and said: "You see -- These mice with the long tails came from the same parents as these mice over here with no tails. Because of the chute's environmental pressure, the mice evolved to be a tailless breed. It was more genetically advantageous for mature mice to have shorter tails here, while there the mice were under no such constraint.
Their response was that I was the intelligent designer -- I argued that it was only a demonstration, if one intelligently imposed environmental pressure could cause a change in the species, then other natural environmental pressures could also have effects that change a species.
They said, "God would be providing such natural pressures." -- I said, "Eureka! So, you agree -- Evolution exists, and may be the very tool your God used to make the variety of species, and that He was smart enough to give his creatures adaptability so they could survive environmental changes!"
They replied: "That is not what The Bible says, and therefore, that is not the truth. I still don't see why your theory of evolution should be taught in schools." I replied, "For the same reason we teach the theory of gravity!", and walked away.
You can't win a logical argument with a fundamentalist -- even if they agree with you, they still disagree on principal.
I hope that the they are just warming up with the "Darwin Day Road Show", so it doesn't seem like an attack at the very heart of the issue, but this is what must happen. Please come to Texas!
P.S. Teach religion in school, fine I don't care -- but just don't remove the Science!
TL;DR: Phhcht -- Houston, we have a fucking problem! We're screwing ourselves out of reasonable people; Over.
Darwin never said we originated from monkeys
The scientists that went on that trip are very bad at telling the difference between the truth and lies. They probably saw the scientists as missionaries and put on the good southern polite smile but never heard a word.
Great, now we have missionaries in science. Fight fire with fire?
I know for a fact we didn't evolve from a monkey we evolved from a jackass. That's why we chose it as our symbol.
I believe in God, but it says that God created the heavens and the earth. As it is. If the design looks like evolution, then thats the design. Denying it is denying God. There seem to be zealots with more zeal than sense. Earlier today, I saw something about the end of the world. The problem with the guy spouting about the end of the world, is the same problem with the people who dream crap up. The words 'Intelligent Design" as two words are nowhere in the Bible. Its something made up by someone. The Bible mentions not trying to figure out when God will show up again. Yet nutters persist. They mean well, (actually the guy who hoped the end would come today, also hoped it would come in 1994) -- so much for once bitten twice shy! The world we live in is the world we live in. Fundamentalists gave DaVinchi hell over the planets. They gave Kepler hell too. Yet they later set up schools to train people in logic and reason (mind you, the Greeks starting with Socrates, his student Plato, and Plato's student Aristotle pressed philosophical thought and strict analytical thinking into world (or at least western) literature. Darwin came along about 100 years ago. Everything that DaVinchi talked about has been soundly proven, well beyond dispute. Biology is one of the sciences that has been on a tear in the last few years. Evolution in action kits will be available in schools within a few years. Go ahead, deny what you see right before your own eyes. Evolution is a dynamic system. I'm happy. Static systems are prone to breakdowns.
Say what you want about religion, but Catholicism has helped shape young minds to be fit for the workplace far better than the exceptional, honest scientist. The fact is that deep in the scientific subtext is a dangerous idea -- that if you remove any assumptions about social order, and begin applying science to your own life, your own personality and your own standards, that you can blindside the least desirable bits of the established order with your own ideas.
That leaves us with how to keep the wheels greased. The key notion is that American culture is not worth rescuing. Why would a child eat or want to be a STEM or any other kind of vegetable when he or she can feast on sugar? Foreign students are doing the work of getting the proper education just fine on their own -- the only metric is that there are enough of these professionals to wind up as the necessary cogs of industry. Indoctrinated, of course, with necessary subtext -- limit your interests to your own field, and never consider the implications in a broader context. Also, contracts are binding and non-negotiable; of course your mindshare is of the company's benefit solely.
To think of the average American child, therefore, we need only appeal to economics. I will take for given the idea that public schools are inefficient. That granted, the Catholic Church has considerable infrastructure already in place to take over a large breadth of education. Coursework would be greatly simplified into the substance necessary: respect for authority. The price of a penis entering an anus in a normative corrective context could not possibly be lower, and this would be a critical part of education. Instead of a standardized test, we would get back to the individual teacher having discretion on which students pass; the metric would be solely if the child exhibits the necessary rate of submission.
In conclusion, we must affirm our societal values by applying them economically; these are corporate values at their best. Time-honored and conservative; easy to relate to and understand. Christian in every way.
Now that's funny - isn't it against political correctness to say that one point of view is right and another is wrong? Aren't we supposed to respect the views of all cultures and not judge others? What happened here to make all this hatred socially acceptable?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Yippee-ki-yay, intelligent design motherfuckers!
I said, "Eureka! So, you agree -- Evolution exists, and may be the very tool your God used to make the variety of species, and that He was smart enough to give his creatures adaptability so they could survive environmental changes!"
I could be wrong, but isn't this exactly the idea of intelligent design?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
P.C. is about respecting the subjective opinions and beliefs of others. A science class should be based on observed facts only unless it's made clear what is an unproven hypothesis.
I have no problem with someone taking a class which offers the view that life is intelligently designed [presenting opinion as opinion]. I have no problem with the details of natural selection and speciation being taught [presenting fact as fact]. I have a problem with intelligent design being presented as a definite fact [presenting opinion as fact]. I have a problem with the origins of life being taught as necessarily independent of an intelligent creator [presenting opinion as fact].
The latter, I'm sure, will inflame many people on this site, but as I know of no observation of life arising where none had been before it remains a hypothesis.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
and the Holy Trinity
He's playing golf with himself? WTF?
(Score:-1, Insightful)
How the fuck does this even happen?
Vortex, Your experiment is a very poor design, fatally flawed. What is your controlled source for mutations? As far as I can see, you have none. Thus this is not an experiment demonstrating evolution, which would require a source of beneficial mutations. You are simply redistributing existing genetic traits in descendant populations. This is nothing more than selective breeding, such as Man has done for millennia. In reality, evolutionary "science" will never actually be a branch of science until we have the ability to conduct experiments testing Darwin's key hypothesis: that RANDOM MUTATIONS provide beneficial variations upon which natural selection can act. That appears to be dozens, if not hundreds, of yeas off.
Three (it would be four if the good doctor had good karma, but alas, he is but a unappreciated parodist pointing out the unscientific nature of chiropractic and alternative 'medicine') overrateds and an insightful mod.
Let's see if we can get this post to +5 troll! Everyone mod me underrated until I am +5 and then someone mod me troll!
Also, in case you are wondering why you don't get points for a while after you mod everyone you disagree with as flamebait, that is because you are contradicted in metamoderation, it hurts your karma, consider modding the dissenters as 'overrated' instead, as it will not hurt it at all.
Nope, it's theistic evolution. Both viewpoints essentially say that "god created the universe", however intelligent design goes a step further in claiming that "life was created (by god but we won't use that word) and hasn't changed". while theistic evolution is more "god designed the laws that govern life, the universe and everything, and thus the process of evolution is part of his/her/its unknowable grand plan, with god having set off in some way the chain of events which led to the eventual creation of life".
They said, "God would be providing such natural pressures." -- I said, "Eureka! So, you agree -- Evolution exists, and may be the very tool your God used to make the variety of species, and that He was smart enough to give his creatures adaptability so they could survive environmental changes!"
That is kinda the idea behind I.D. If all the variants for survival are already in the species' genetic coding they would adapt to their surroundings to survive based on what they're eating, what sort of terrain they have to deal with, what climate it is, etc. and the offspring eventually take on those qualities. It's like breeding dogs and cats for their specific traits or growing crops to gain a different flavor or quality to them. It's not like saying a frog will evolve into a bird or something.
I believe the main complaint the fundamentalists have is that evolution teaches that everything came from a theory that says the world started from a single cell that advanced its lifecycle to become more and more creatures until humans eventually came about. It is a theory, but so is I.D. according to many people as well. Better things could be done if people would stop trying to argue over where we came from or how all the different species were formed during the big bang or whichever idea is popular now.
When did the I.D nutjobs get so entrenched that anybody would feel it necessary to use a term like "evolutionary scientists" for what used to be just plain old scientists?
This is supposed to be a site for nerds, you know, basement dwellers, not cavemen/women.
Don't bullshit us with "scientists". Spell them ouit - biologists, physicists, paleontologists, etc.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Of course everyone was welcoming and gracious. any school against them wouldn't have hosted them...
...the USA that is.
America is a great place to visit but I wouldn't like to live there.
In most of the rest of the world evolution is like geography or art or whatever, it's just one branch of human knowledge - taught in schools, sometimes discussed, sometimes questioned but not special.
There are lots of religious believers and non-believers in the world, very few behave like they do in the USA.
Vortex, Your experiment is a very poor design, fatally flawed. What is your controlled source for mutations? As far as I can see, you have none. Thus this is not an experiment demonstrating evolution, which would require a source of beneficial mutations. You are simply redistributing existing genetic traits in descendant populations. This is nothing more than selective breeding, such as Man has done for millennia.
Bingo. Darwin figured out a century and a half ago that evolution *is* just selective breeding.
In reality, evolutionary "science" will never actually be a branch of science until we have the ability to conduct experiments testing Darwin's key hypothesis: that RANDOM MUTATIONS provide beneficial variations upon which natural selection can act. That appears to be dozens, if not hundreds, of yeas off.
If it's random, you'd expect some to be good and some to be bad.
I suspect that the better something is adapted to its environment, the less likely a mutation will be good - just a simple statistical matter of having to beat something that's already better than purely random. But environments change, or populations move into new environments, and suddenly they aren't as optimized as they were before, so the odds of a random mutation being beneficial improves.
Also, you seem to be operating under the assumption that beneficial mutations haven't been observed in nature and in the petri dish. There have been cases where we can see *exactly* what mutation gave rise to resistance to our antibiotics or pesticides.
For the casual reader, there was an example of the latter in the May Scientific American, in the article about superweeds.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"...one point of view is right and another is wrong? ....all this hatred..."
In case you don't mean that as a funny: how is it that saying a point of view is wrong, amounts to hatred?
No, ID isn't a theory. It's a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the facts. Behe's "irreducible complexity" only shows that he doesn't understand evolution at the layman level (or perhaps that he does, and is merely being dishonest about it -- pick your poison). Dembski's bullshit about "specified complexity" and "no free lunch" is just that: bullshit. A crapload of misrepresentations to produce a number that lets him say "I can't believe that happened without God's help!".
Evolution, OTOH, is supported by craploads of evidence. Paleontological evidence. Genetic evidence. Behavioral evidence. Biogeographical evidence. A crapload of stuff few creationists even know exists.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Ever heard of nylonase?
Now that's funny - isn't it against political correctness to say that one point of view is right and another is wrong?
And Slashdot is the internet's bastion of political correctness, right?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Never mind. Same time tomorrow?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
you're surprised at what a guy who's his own father can do? really?
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
This is either hysterical nonsense, or a troll. Texas Science education standards require the teaching of evolution.
Evolution is being taught in Texas.
There is another bit of nonsense popular on Slashdot - that Christians cannot be scientists, let alone good scientists.
Collins: Why this scientist believes in God
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It is hard to argue with Creationists and I.D. followers, they can't get their little minds around the concept of evolution and therefore think their God is equally dim, their mind is so small it even refuses to contemplate their God is powerful enough to run a system like evolution.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
People like you and the people of the story are some of the few reasons a European like me (though Europeans are quite diverse) still have some hope for your country.
No, not a moron. Calling him a moron gives him too much credit. He is, in fact, a "lesson."
The reason you can't convince the bible-thumpers is because they have been indoctrinated since birth through churches, televangelists and others trying to push religious agendas. They've been brainwashed to the point where a rational argument or demonstration will not win them over. They are impervious to facts and scientific evidence involving empirical data. Intelligent Design is nothing more than Creationism re-branded in an attempt to circumnavigate the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution (which has helped to keep religion out of public schools)...This was proven in the court case: Kitzmiller v. Dover.
Underrated and overrated -- two rubbish bits of the moderation system, no doubt about it. Then again, it doesn't really matter except in the larger commented stories. For instance, that spinal injury story yesterday -- the doctor's thread dominated the story in replies, and he started at -1.
Mostly dead. That's how it works.
I prefer New Riders myself.
Yes. Nylonase-generating organisms are merely speculated to have evolved a gene change via a beneficial mutation. None has been observed:
"There is scientific consensus that the capacity to synthesize nylonase most probably developed as a single-step mutation that survived because it improved the fitness of the bacteria possessing the mutation."
The mutation has not been observed through gene sequencing before- and after-mutation populations, nor a mutagen identified. Indeed, until sequencing is perhaps a milllon times faster than today, such observation is virtually impossible. Eventually it will be possible to conduct such experiments. Not today.
I don't worry about Neb / Va schools and religious teaching being pushed into schools. I attended school in those states and science WAS core.
I've also lied in Tx and Ga. Religious fanatics are often part of the local governments and push non-scientific, magical reasoning into school books. I live in a county in GA today that has forced science teachers to teach creationism (thought they call it ID). Whatever. As both an engineer and an Atheist, I'm embarrassed for my public schools to be doing this.
For all you so-called educated people who believe in a mysterious "god" - instead of reading the current best seller next week, read the bible from start to finish. I have. It isn't much of a book and Christians pick the best parts to share, leaving behind the horrendous things and just really BAD writing.
I don't have any issue if people want to believe in an imaginary friend and call it, god. That's fine. Just don't push that crap on my kids. I would pray for you and your souls, but you don't have a soul and there's nobody listening to "prayers" so that would be a complete waste of time.
"Darwin figured out a century and a half ago that evolution *is* just selective breeding."
No, according to evolutionary biologists these days
See
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/cfol/ch2-means.asp
You may not agree but give it a fair read
"And Gould is far from an isolated example. Back in October of 1980, the world’s leading evolutionists met in Chicago for a conference summarized popularly by Adler and Carey in Newsweek18 and professionally by Lewin in Science19 According to the professional summary,
The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macro-evolution.
That is, the processes of mutation, selection, and sexual recombination all produce variation within kind (microevolution—or creationist adaptation), but can these processes be logically extended (extrapolated) to explain the presumed evolutionary change generally from simpler to more complex types (macroevolution)?
At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No."
Anybody knows the answer is roughly 4.1888.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I like how you subtly put windows and mac users into the I.D camp.
Taking Darwin on the road, in this day and age? Doesn't he rattle incessantly?
Good stuff, though, this can only be applauded.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Nobody's ever lost money modding the Slashdotters "underintelligent."
Also, you seem to be operating under the assumption that beneficial mutations haven't been observed in nature and in the petri dish. There have been cases where we can see *exactly* what mutation gave rise to resistance to our antibiotics or pesticides.
No, no, no. That's doesn't count. That's just micro-evolution and is completely different from Darwinism!!! I learned that from uncle, who lives in Texas, no joke. He's a lawyer and his daughter and son-in-law are both medical doctors...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
So where are all the intermediate stages of evolution.
The fact that some transitional fossils are not preserved does not disprove evolution. Evolutionary biologists do not expect that all transitional forms will be found and realize that many species leave no fossils at all. Lots of organisms don't fossilize well and the environmental conditions for forming good fossils are not that common. So, science actually predicts that for many evolutionary changes there will be gaps in the record.
Also, scientists have found many transitional fossils. For example, there are fossils of transitional organisms between modern birds and their theropod dinosaur ancestors, and between whales and their terrestrial mammal ancestors.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
That appears to be a document written by a creationist who claims to be an Evolutionary Biologist from Ball State. I looked him up and while he did get a PHD from Ball State it was in Education. His dissertation was "Relationship of programmed instruction to test and discussion performance among beginning college biology students".
He quotes Gould and then clearly misinterprets what Gould says about micro vs macro Evolution. He quotes Pierre Grasse as if he were a modern Evolutionary Biologist rather than the last Lamarckist (a 19th century competing theory to Darwin) to hold the Chair of Evolutionary Biology in Paris.
He then quotes the frequently misquoted Albert Szent-Gyorgyi and his theory of syntropy and external force as proof of Creationism and goes so far to imply that Gyorgyi developed the model due to some discomfort with Evolution and Genetics. Gyorgyi developed that theory by first postulating a connection with quantum mechanics and then free radicals leading to his 1974 syntropy model for causes of cancer.
I particularly liked this bit:
Grasse’ is not (yet) a creationist. But he does say that his knowledge of the living world convinces him that there must be some “internal force” involved in the history of life.
Grasse was born in 1895 and died in 1985, he stopped being scientifically active in the 70's, yet Parker seems to imply that he's having some ongoing debate.
It's not a terribly rigorous document to begin with which would be fine but taking quotes out of context or intentionally misinterpreting the quotes so he can say 'see even these esteemed biologists knew evolution was wrong' is pretty pathetic.
You weren't transformed from apes, you were transformed from a descendant of the human and ape strains. All dogs evolve from the wolf so its selective breeding for specific traits.
people only believe in ID because they are too lazy to check the evidence and their "evidence" (scripture) tells them what to believe. Not sure if i've ever come across someone who believes ID is true who wasn't a theist.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The fact that some transitional fossils are not preserved does not disprove evolution.
It's like saying "The fact that no one has seen or talked to God does not disprove the existence of God."
So, science actually predicts that for many evolutionary changes there will be gaps in the record. And religion preaches faith to account for lack of proof in the existence of God and even predicts that people won't believe in the existence of God.
"Team of dumb asses discover that the non-elite aren't actually as retarded, backward and anti-evolutionary as they had prejudged." Kinda makes the 'scientists' look bad, though.
Windows was designed!? It's the platypus of operating systems.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yeah, I can say stupid bullshit about people I disagree with too, fundies. I think you shouldn't be allowed to breed so your stupidity doesn't end up in the gene pool for another generation. The hell is with these people, anyways?
There is no -1 Disagree.
The reason they use 'most probably' is not doubt, but lack of the observation you mentioned. What I see you failed to include is that nylon is a completely new and man-made chemical and there would have been literally no use for nylonase prior to it's development.
"Eventually..."
Not by your criteria. It would entail having the complete sequence immediately before and after the mutation. You see, DNA mutates constantly and your goal post can't be satisfied. You'd simply claim the gene was introduced from elsewhere.
I'll turn your little unspoken demand of live-action observation back on you. Can you demonstrate the existence of a god or gods? If not, you need to loosen up your demands of science as to how it writes its conclusions.
Are there not people who can say, "I believe in God, and I still think science is a valid and logical way of understanding the natural world."
I mean, Jesus said that He spoke in parables. If He explained universal spiritual truths in terms that were anything but direct or factual, but rather indirect and allegorical, then why would one expect that the rest of His Word would be direct, factual and literal?
Science really doesnt encroach upon Spirtual Truth because it makes no attempt whatsoever to establish spiritual truth. And God did not give us His Word to help us understand Earth, or any of the rest of the natural universe. He gave us His Word so that we could understand the Spiritual universe. If people read something in the Bible that has nothing to do with God or loving the neighbor, they have misunderstood what they read, because every verse in the Bible concerns the "Two Great Commandments"--at least that is what Jesus implied (Matt 22:40).
So where are all the intermediate stages of evolution.
We're finding them. Slowly. Its a big planet and fossils (some just a few chips of bone) are difficult to find. Keep in mind that, at one point, the population of homo sapiens may have been reduced to a few thousand individuals due to environmental conditions.
The important point here is that; although there are large holes in the fossil record, no evidence has been found to date that doesn't fit the evolutionary path from the ape/man ancestor several million years ago to where we are today. Given a certain rate of random genetic mutation and the subsequent selection provided by the survival of the fittest, the 'genetic distance' from that past to the present can be explained by evolution. Most of the path remains speculative, but the pieces we have found reinforces the theory.
We are never going to provide for you a chart that says, harrytuttle777 was begat from Harry Tuttle Sr, who was begat from....., who was begat from bobo the chip. That ain't gonna happen.
Have gnu, will travel.
Based on the title, I thought the religious Darwin zealots had actually dug Darwin's body up to drag around to their faithful. That would have been something worth reading about.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly. "
See also, on the revolution of religious thinking:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_42_38/ai_92805318/
And:
http://evolution-of-religion.com/
"If religious beliefs and behaviors promoted survival and reproduction in our ancestral past, then they may have been favored by natural selection over human evolutionary history. This would mean that religious beliefs and behaviors are adaptive, and that religion evolved as a natural product of Darwinian selection. The "Evolution of Religion" project is dedicated to exploring this hypothesis using scientific methods from psychology and evolutionary biology."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
See
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/cfol/ch2-means.asp
You may not agree but give it a fair read
I strongly disagree with fraud, and in particular fraudulently misrepresenting what people have said.
Harvardâ(TM)s Stephen Gould16 quite clearly recognizes the difference between evolution and mutations.
Fraud. Gould recognizes the difference between evolution and mutations the same way he recognizes the difference between a drop of water and atoms.
Gould's position is that mutations do accumulate over time, just like water atoms accumulate in the air. Gould's argument is basically that water atoms accumulate in the air over a week and hit a threshold "quickly" condensing into rain over an hour. Gould's position is that mutations do accumulate in a population over millions of years and they reach a threshold where they "quickly" (over tens of thousands of years) come together by Natural Selection transitioning to a new species. You have millions of rare mutations, then a collection of say a thousand rare mutations come together by Natural Selected where all individuals have those thousand (formerly rare) mutations.
Your link grossly misrepresents Gould's argument, and grossly misrepresents out-of-context the quotes they take from him.
But then Gould asks himself, âoeHow can such processes change a gnat or a rhinoceros into something fundamentally different?â Answering his own question in a later article, Gould17 simply says: âoeThat theory [orthodox neo-Darwinian extrapolationalism], as a general proposition, is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy.â
That is gross FRAUD. They took two unrelated quotes from Gould and claimed one is an answer to the other. Gould's positions is that rhinoceros and gnats did evolve by mutations, and it was obviously a rhetorical question to discuss how that evolution happened when he said "How can such processes change a gnat or a rhinoceros into something fundamentally different?â. The second quot is NOT him "answering" the first quote "question". The second quote is Gould making a grandiose statement that smooth and steady dead in favor of his idea of uneven surges of strong rapid selection.
Answers in Genesis is perpetrating a gross fraud to misquote Gould. Gould's position is that many small mutations *do* combine resulting in all of the "large" changes of evolution. Answers in Genesis is taking carefully selected Gould quotes wildly out of context and surrounding them with their own fraudulent descriptive text trying to reverse the meaning of what Gould was actually saying.
After Answers in Genesis gets done misrepresenting Gould's words, they proceed to claim "Gould is far from an isolated example" grossly misrepresenting another quote:
Lewin quote:The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macro-evolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.
And Answers in Genesis cut the quote off there. However in Lewin's very next sentence says " the two can more probably be seen as a continuum ". Again, Answers in Genesis is fraudulently misrepresenting what he was saying. The Answers in Geneisis author is either clueless what Gould and Lewin were actually talking about, or the author was deliberately misrepresenting the subject being discussed. The subject those people was a within evolution argument whether Natural Selection is steady and smooth, or if selection and speciation tends to occur in surges. The subject is whether there is something akin to a phase change like when water atoms relatively quickly condense into raindrops. No, there is no doubt that raindrops are compo
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No, reality dictates that the fossil record is not going to be stored in its entirety, any more than every single movement of a killer from his bloody bedroom in the morning to when he kills someone that evening is going to be recorded. No area of science is going to have perfect and absolute knowledge. But it isn't necessary, any more than statistics require every single data point. You get enough data to build a model or a theory from.
Fortunately, for evolution, the fossil record is not the only evidence. The molecular data is also there, demonstrating not only the genetic linkages between populations near and distant in evolutionary terms, but even giving us molecular clocks. And you know what, other than some tweaking here and there, the two lines of evidence do a rather impressive job of confirming each other. This complaint about the fossil record is now forty years out of date. Maybe someday when you're not busy patting yourself on the back for your pseudo-skepticism you might want to pick up a book on evolutionary theory written after, say, 1965.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Nylonase-generating organisms are merely speculated to have evolved a gene change via a beneficial mutation. None has been observed
Your information is out of date. After the discovery of natural evolution of nylonase in the wild, controlled laboratory experiments were conducted. We have in fact observed the evolution of nylonase in controlled experiments. Read the paper that was published on it.
the mutation has not been observed through gene sequencing before- and after-mutation populations, nor a mutagen identified. Indeed, until sequencing is perhaps a milllon times faster than today, such observation is virtually impossible.
First of all, I have no idea why you would expect some mutagen to be identified. Mutations naturally occur all the time. If a mutagen is applied it merely inflates natural mutation rates.
Secondly, you appear to be posting from a "today" which is some time in the mid 1980's or early 1990's. The speed and cost of gene sequencing has already improved by a factor in the ballpark of a million. There are commercial labs where you can get your entire human genome sequenced for a few thousand dollars. So yes, scientists obviously have been sequencing these genes, and they have identified the exact origin gene sequence, and identified the simple mutations that occurred in the evolution of nylonase. In one case a T was inserted into a largely repetitive gene sequence resulting in a frame shift.
Eventually it will be possible to conduct such experiments. Not today.
Yep, eventually. In like the late 1990's or early 2000's. Some time far far in the future when we have actual experimental proof of evolution in action, lol. Eventually we might even have personal computers and some sort of internet-thingie where we'll be able to go to some magical search engine-invention-thingie where we can find out stuff and all check what sort of evidence exists.
Eventually it may be possible. But not today. Because you're posting from like 1981.
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Your experiment definitely showed adaptation in animals. But you started with mice, and ended up with mice. Just mice with shorter or longer tails. Obviously adaptation happens. But evolution, really, is the transformation of one animal into a completely different animal.
I'd like to see an experiment where you start with a mouse and end up with a dog. Or some other animal.
Vortex, Your experiment is a very poor design, fatally flawed. What is your controlled source for mutations? As far as I can see, you have none.
Mutations occur naturally, in every living thing. It is statistically impossible to not have new mutations in each individual that is born.
Thus this is not an experiment demonstrating evolution, which would require a source of beneficial mutations.
The "source" is life. Mutations are unavoidable in living things. Mutations are random, so it is unavoidable that some of them will be "beneficial", (where "beneficial" or is largely determined by the current enviornment).
You are simply redistributing existing genetic traits in descendant populations.
It would require DNA analysis to specifically identify the genetics, but presumably there were no tailless mice in his original population :D
In reality, evolutionary "science" will never actually be a branch of science until we have the ability to conduct experiments testing Darwin's key hypothesis: that RANDOM MUTATIONS provide beneficial variations upon which natural selection can act. That appears to be dozens, if not hundreds, of yeas off.
Only if you're posting from the 1800's or something. We've had the technology to do genetic sequencing for decades. The experiments you describe have been done, multiple times by different research teams, and have in fact repeatedly confirmed natural random mutations and natural selection producing creating beneficial new genes with new useful information for new valuable abilities. Off the top of my head, the two best documented experiments proving the evolution of new beneficial genes (and beneficial new abilities) would be e. coli evolving the ability to digest citric acid, and an experiment where some other bacteria evolved nylonase genes. (Note that the evolution of nylonase was first observed happening naturally downstream from nylon factories, but that evolution was later replicated in controlled laboratory experiments with a different species.)
So assuming you're posting from the 19th century or something, then yeah some day in the 20th century evolutionary "science" might actually become a branch of real science when we have the ability to conduct those experiments.
P.S. From everyone here in the 21st century, we send our greetings. You should come visit, or even join us and stay if you like :) Not only has evolution become a real proven science, we've even had men walk on the moon, and we've got this cool internet-thing where anyone with questions or doubts about evolution can go to this Google place and look up all the experiments that have been done confirming evolution.
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Garbage. If there is already variation there - which there apparently is or their tails would all be the same length - then evolution can work by altering the relative frequency of the different alleles.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So where are all the intermediate stages of evolution.
Every species is an intermediate stage of evolution. So long ago we humans had an apelike ancestor. So you said where's the thing between humans and ape? So we found Homo Erectus. Then you said, now there are two gaps, where's the thing between the apelike ancestor and Homo Erectus and the thing between Homo Erectus and modern humans? So then we found Australopithecus Africanis and Homo Habilis. And then you said now there are 4 gaps, where's the thing between the apelike ancestor and Australopithecus Africanis, and between Australopithecus Africanis and Homo Erectus, and between Homo Erectus and Homo Habilis, and between Homo Habilis and modern humans. And so on. We get more gaps, but the gaps get smaller. Eventually they get small enough that we can't fit a separate species in them. But there are certainly individuals in those gaps.
Just because you don't know who your direct maternal ancestor was 23 generations back is no reason to doubt that you had one.
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Credit to these scientists for their tactical decisions here.
I think this is a great idea , to look at the technical details of evolution without getting into the religious/political arguments.
I fondly remember taking a class in high school that was an extended version of this.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
That's preposterous. There is no distinction between science and knowledge, between a scientific theory and a question, between a scientific school and an opinion whatsoever (except perhaps in scope). All of them are, in the sense that they are expressed by individuals, subjective. All of them can match objective reality or not. Whether you claim that there is a God at home or in a school makes no difference as to whether it is true or not and moral or not.
That's exactly why the anti-ID crowd has it wrong. They say: It's ok to lie to your kids at home, just say it's not science. It means that science is outside the realm of truth (ie honesty), thereby destroying the very foundation it rests on.
A lie is a lie and a myth is a myth, you don't need the word "science" to see that.
As a native Texan and a firm believer in evolution, I thought your conversation with said fundamentalist was going rather well (by the standards of talking to fanatics) under this moron brought up the Bible and disagreed for no good reason that I can think of. While I believe in God (or some higher power equivalent to the standard Christian idea thereof) - something that took me 17 years and observing an event that truly was a miracle that could be explained by nothing other than simple grace (which is essentially something good being given unto a person - believer or not - when they essentially don't deserve it) before I could accept that it was a fact that there is something there that acts either in a manner akin to the divine or is programmed to respond in such a way (a theory that I don't discard), I also require proof of things before believing them. A scientifically valid series of experiments that provide a positive constitutes proof. A preacher's word about what's in the Bible (since the more rabid the fundamentalist, the less likely they are to have actually read the book - that's been my experience) is neither proof nor even a hypothesis. It's just ranting and raving.
And Texas isn't that bad of a place compared to a lot of other states. For example, Houston has some of the best medical research facilities in the country, as well as a lot of people with science degrees of one kind or another associated with the petroleum industry.
But religion needs to be kept out of schools for a lot of reasons. Not because teaching about religions is necessarily a bad thing, but because of the slippery slope effect. One year it's just explaining the basic tenets of major religions, a few years down the road it's turned into whatever religion dominates the county or voting district. That's not just a slippery slope, it's been greased and the brake lines cut.
And despite the fact that I never got anything useful out of grade/primary/high school (college was a whole other story, but it generally is (in my experience and observation), what was so bad about the texts? The ones that I received when bouncing from one school to another might have been a bit dated, but they weren't incorrect (in most areas) nor were they biased towards religious nuts.
I wonder who foot the bill for the 300 shields. Darwin's voyage only gives two immediate technology advances, there are far better things.
Also, you seem to be operating under the assumption that beneficial mutations haven't been observed in nature and in the petri dish. There have been cases where we can see *exactly* what mutation gave rise to resistance to our antibiotics or pesticides.
No, no, no. That's doesn't count. That's just micro-evolution and is completely different from Darwinism!!! I learned that from uncle, who lives in Texas, no joke. He's a lawyer and his daughter and son-in-law are both medical doctors...
Yeah, lots of creationists have already surrendered to the extent of recognizing microevolution. But they can't explain why millions of years of microevolution don't result in macroevolution.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If you've done what you shouldn't do and shot away your cares with a well placed bullet. We might have a place for you. Thank you for cleaning out the shallow end of the gene pool.
Does anyone here still believe in the laws of physics? Because that particular law absolutely rules out any possibility that the Evolution theory could be true, and gives a definite nod in the direction of "intellegent design". The rule says "all natural systems will progress from a state of order to a state of chaos", or to put it in laymans terms: stuff degenerates. So that's why, in the last century, 99.99% of lifeforms have become extinct, but none have magically evolved. The notion of a trillion years will dazzle humans that can't comprehend infinity, but it wont invent anything. I can throw a rock at a house and smash a window - thats a mutation, and sometimes its useful. But no amount of rock-throwing will ever produce a sky-scraper with functioning lifts and aircon and tvs, because that's just absurb. Science is not in conflict with religeon (unless you count die-hard god-denying evolutionists), but rather Physics is apparently in conflict with Biology. The bible says that all of creation declares the glory of god, which is why a bullshit little ant is actually really facscinating. That fact is, some people have good reasons to want to deny the existance of a god, and that can drive them to be a little closed-minded at times.
Yes, it is I.D. propaganda.
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", evolutionary "science" will never actually be a branch of science until we have the ability to conduct experiments testing Darwin's key hypothesis: "
We use it to make predictions. If species D evolved from species A, we can then say species B, and C must be found between earth layers where we found A and D.
And that has been used to make accurate predictions, many many times.
So yea, it's tested.
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Just the face that it contains the words microevolution and macroevolution, which are not biological concepts indicates that it isn't an accurate description of that happened at that conference.
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You might notice the word "seems" in that sentence. He doesn't say that his theory is absurd, but that he can understand how it might seem absurd. The evolution of the eye (several times, in different lineages, I might add. Some much better designs than the mammalian eye) is moderately well understood at this point. The starting point, a patch of light sensitive skin, provides a distinct advantage over competing life forms with no light sensing apparatus. I think the "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Dawkins has a description that is approachable to non-technical people. The whole book is a good read.
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You weren't transformed from apes, you were transformed from a descendant of the human and ape strains.
Hrm... I'm pretty sure it would have been an ancestor, evolving from a descendant would take more than faith in a theory, it would require magic and/or a time machine.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
I love your experiment. We have a living one with what we call the McDonald effect. It is the doubling of the weight of the average American middle aged adult, shortening his life by 10 years, and creating big muscles for the remote control thumb.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
You're not wrong. ID is simply guided evolution.
So where are all the intermediate stages of evolution.
Every species is either an intermediate state of evolution or an evolutionary dead end. There are periods of time when evolutionary pressures are light and things don't change much for a while but eventually it's one or the other.
But fossilization is a process that requires the right conditions. We won't ever find fossilized examples of all species and there will always be what people consider gaps in the record. That's just a fact and it doesn't hurt the case for evolution on bit.
I looked him up - he's not a Ph.D but an Ed.D.
But the point I make is this:
"Darwin figured out a century and a half ago that evolution *is* just selective breeding."
No, according to evolutionary biologists these days
Do you agree?