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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.'"
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.
Creationism really isn't science because it cannot be disproven. That's the fundamental flaw of the field and why you could, theoretically, be a creationist and a scientist, but not a creationist scientist.
Can a scientist be not "evolutionary"? Can you be an "creationist scientist"? Is creationism even considered "science"?
I interpret "evolutionary scientist" as a scientist specializing in evolutionary biology.
"This algorithm runs in constant time. Come on, 2,147,483,648 is a constant..."
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.
Don't forget the court case where even the judge determined that creationism is NOT science.
(If you're really interested, you can google it and dig through the mass of false hits.)
Not only the law, but the Catholic Church itself says so.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
As it was used in the article, "evolutionary scientist" means "biologist" or possibly "evolutionary biologist."
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.
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.
"Sounds like it was a scientific carnival. "
A boring one. Also did you notice they were going to universities? FTA:
"The day before we rolled into Grant, Yanega and I visited the University of Nebraska at Kearney, where we met with undergraduates and lectured to both university and public audiences."
Really? They needed to teach evolution at universities too? I mean I can understand some little backwards high school somewhere believing creationism, but universities need help too?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Can you be an "creationist scientist"?
No, for creationism.Yes, for "intelligent design", meaning that one accepts evolution, but sees it as a tool used by god to tweak and direct evolution.
Is creationism even considered "science"?
No, because scientific method has not been applied. It's based on blind faith which is the inverse of science.
If you want people to pay attention to what you're saying, then the first thing to avoid doing is to avoid offending them. Religious people tend to get quite offended when you dismiss their religion.
So, the trick, or "middle ground", is to not talk away their faith, but rather to play along with it. Intelligent design is a good middle ground, because it allows for both evolution and godliness. So you can actually start some sort of dialog (which is better than none).
Religious people tend to get quite offended when you dismiss their religion.
So, should I get offended because many (but not all) religious people dismiss my atheism? Of course, I don't get offended, because their viewpoint is rooted in a fantasy, utterly divorced from tangible reality. Instead, I try to be be accommodative of their beliefs and don't push my own (neither do I pretend not to be atheist). Is it too much to ask for some reciprocal consideration?
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
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
Great, now we have missionaries in science. Fight fire with fire?
Antibody response.
Kind of like the Gay Pride movement, which IMO was a response the the 1980s habit of social conservatives peaking into closets hoping to 'out' homosexuals. Well, now they're out, and the people who were outing them wish they were back in.
Law of unintended consequences, etc.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Never mind. Same time tomorrow?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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
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.
"Physics is the only real science. The rest are just stamp collecting."
-- Ernest Rutherford
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.
A disproof of evolution as a whole would be tricky without finding something springing into existence in a fully formed modern state. Asking to disprove evolution is like asking to disprove gravity the question is too broad to be of much use. Specific theories within evolution are better things to attempt to disprove. Did species A evolve in manner B? Creationism on the other hand fall completely outside of proof because they rely on the intervention of things that aren't measurable or detectable.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
The sudden appearance of a unique species with no apparent ancestors. If we were to find -- either in the fossil record or in some deep jungle -- a six-legged three-eyed mammal-like species, for example, that would something hard to explain via evolution.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Well, it is the American South.
I wonder who foot the bill for the 300 shields. Darwin's voyage only gives two immediate technology advances, there are far better things.