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Why Are Some Hell-Bent On Teaching Intelligent Design?
Funksaw writes "Here's an op-ed by first-time politician, long-time Slashdotter Brian Boyko, where he talks about his experiences testifying at the Texas Board of Education in favor of having real science in science textbooks. But beyond that, he also tries to examine, philosophically, why there is such hardened resistance to the idea of evolution in Texas. From the article: '[W]hat is true is that evolution tests faith. The fact of evolution is incontrovertible and supported by mounds of empirical evidence. Faith, on the other hand, is fragile. It is supported only by the strength of human will. And this is where it gets tricky. Because to many believers, faith, not works, is the only guarantee that one can pass God's litmus test and gain access to His divine kingdom. To lose one's faith is to literally damn oneself. So tests to that faith must be avoided at all costs. Better to be a philosophical coward than a theological failure.'"
As scientific knowledge advances, god shrinks.
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Check out Bob Altemeyer's - 'The Authoritarians' and his chapter about religious fundamentalist. It explains quite a bit about this strange ID movement - (and it is based on experiments and only theories) :
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
If God did create us, how bad an engineer do you have to be to put a sewage outlet right in the middle of a recreational area?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
The argument seems to go as follows:
If evolution is true, then Genesis is false
If Genesis is fals ethen the whole of the Bible is called into question.
If the Bible is called into question then it is no basis for morality.
If the Bible is no basis for morality then the ten commandments are invalid.
Therefore if evlution is true, there's no prohibition on murder.
Clearly we could play a game of spot the logical fallacy but this seems to be the issue creationists have with evolution.
Are we still talking about theists or did we switch over to business consultants?
Fundamentalist Christians. Seriously, this is not in need of a deep philosophical examination. Those that follow stone age mysticism get upset when science threatens & exposes their religious insecurities. When there's a lot of them, they will use legal means to enforce their superstitions. Like Texas.
Ummm... the way TFT(itle) is worded throws some gas over fire.
How's that for a believer: "If you believe in Inteligent Design, then you are bent by hell"?
How this way of framing the topic helps a civilized tone for a discussion?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
... it pretty much removes God from the whole picture. His place is then relegated to the creation of life in it's absolutely fundamental form, where evolution takes over. Personally, I think that abiogenesis is the better rational explanation. The people who want intelligent design (or, let's call it by name: "creationism") have a problem with God of the gaps, so they desperately try to cling to a gap that has been filled a long time ago. The remaining gaps (like the actual "first life" and the "big bang") seem too insignificant for their great Skydaddy's glory.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I don't think parroting that is productive. The majority of creationists simply believe what their leaders tell them, and the ones who forge their own paths and invent doctrine (dinosaur fossils are what?!) do so because they are trapped by their cultural assumptions and (when you get down to it) an unhealthy preoccupation with avoiding oblivion. You, um, did RTFS, right?
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
If "God created everything in a week" was accurate and provable, then it would be knowledge. Fine, heaven might have an entrance quiz, but regurgitating facts isn't an exhibition of faith.
If there's nothing to test the view that you hold, it's simply not faith.
There should be more evolution taught to enhance the levels of faith that Christians can hold. Surely learning about evolution, picking up a PhD, topping it with a Nobel prize for presenting categoric evidence for evolution, chucking in the missing link, and proving Monkeys evolved from humans - and then turning around to say you never actually believed any of it. Surely that's got to get you high "faith marks".
It also doesn't help that the scientific community uses the word "theory". The typical religious person thinks this means their view is just as valid. It also means every argument about evolution starts with "It's just a theory right? I just want my theory to be taught as well..." (which makes me start to twitch with the urge to slap these people and scream at them).
We need to retire the use of the phrase "theory" when used in the context of a scientific theory. Terminology needs to change and evolve to combat the fact that the mainstream interpretation of the word "theory" flies directly in the face what the scientific community wishes to convey.
Science for science's sake is pointless unless it can be communicated to others after learning something. Choosing and adapting terminology can seem silly and trivial when faced with what the subject matter is about, but can be just as important in combating ignorance.
That's the creationist side as seen by someone on the side of science, but it is not at all how the creationists view themselves. They aren't afraid of their faith being tested, because they believe their arguments are unbeatable and their faith secure - though they may worry about their children being lead astray.
The key to understanding creationists is to realise that it isn't about creationism itsself. They have, as they would proudly call it, a 'God-centered worldview.' Everything comes down in some manner to their religious beliefs. Not just creationism, but their moral and political views, their attachment to national identity, their community, and their general vision of how things 'should be' in the world. They view Christianity not just as another religion among many, but as a defining aspect of western civilisation and that element which makes it great and has brought such prosperity through the ages.
They also believe that Christianity and morality are one and the same. God is the standard of morality, the definition, and the source. Only Christians, as followers of the true God, know how to be moral people. Others might perform a reasonable immitation by following some social norms, but they are just denying that Christianity is their source. This is why they insist upon placing the ten commandments on public buildings: For them, 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' is the very reason murder is illegal: Had God not proclaimed that, and the faithful not kept it, then there would be no way for people to realise murder is an immoral act. Likewise for the theft thing.
So that which threatens the doctrine of creation is far more concerning than a scientific debate: It is nothing less than an existential threat to civilisation itsself. Their concern is that if the population in general lose belief in the bible as inerrant - not belief in Christianity in general, but belief in the rock-solid beyond-debate 'truth' of the bible - then they will lose all spiritual direction. The bible will become fuzzy, a document where people can dismiss bits they don't like (The irony of this is quite lost on them as they happily tuck into their pork sausages). Before you know it, homosexuality will be accepted, prayer will be illegal, everyone will be having casual sex and marriage will be a thing of the past. Then people will start worshiping pagan idols, gangs of violent atheists will start roaming the streets killing people for fun, and eventually God will abandon the country and send the communists to take over and punish everyone.
That's why they are so insistant. They believe the bible is the foundation for America and western civilisation in general. Take away the foundation, and the whole structure collapses. Creationism and patriotism are intertwined, almost inseperable.
I grew up in Texas and have lived here all of my life. The resistance to evolution can be summed up in one sentence:
"You can't tell me what to fuckin' believe!"
If some long haired city boy told them their face was on fire the'd refuse to believe it, basically.
People teach intelligent design because they're afraid that if their kids grow up to be less ignorant and blinkered than they are their kids will leave them either physically or emotionally. Lots of parents try to define small universes that keep their kids close, and not just right wing fundies either, this kind of crap transcends political divides.
It's a legitimate concern, if you let your kids break down the walls that hold you in they might go somewhere you can't follow, but it could probably be better dealt with by addressing your own problems rather than creating problems for your children.
Biblical creationists believe that evolution undermines the idea of divine creation, specifically the idea that man is created in God's image. This is a very important belief for them. Without it, their world crumbles.
When you present them with facts and evidence supporting evolution, they're not dispassionately evaluating the evidence, but desperately trying to avoid confronting it, to the point of profound intellectual dishonesty.
They are what used to be called neurotic, irrational and disturbed in one specific area or about one specific thing, but otherwise relatively functional human beings, able to work, raise families, etc, etc.
The answer to the question of why Biblical Creationists are like this is the same as the answer to the question of why some people are holocaust deniers, or Marxists, or followers of any other ideology or belief that is in obvious defiance of objective reality. They have invested their sense of self into this belief, and they cannot abandon that belief without sacrificing their sense of self along with it.
So they hold on to that belief, no matter what.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
or be both, which these Texans seem to be.
If god exists, then he does, end of. Therefore what is there to fear from facts?
I therefore strongly suspect those objecting to teaching evolution don't believe in god at all, really. They have another agenda.
I think you are misunderstanding their motivation. Their motivation is not to prove/disprove the existence of God in any rigorous way, but to go to heaven. The Christian belief system says that the only way to do that is through faith, which in modern times is interpreted as belief. This means that it is best for them (and their children) to avoid any attempt at rigorous proof if it could end up with them seeing the alternative as a viable possibility. To them this is losing faith, which their god will punish with eternal torture. (OK for Christian pedants their god will allow them to be eternally tortured by someone else despite having the power to stop it).
(Speaking as a Bible believing Christian)
You're ignoring the fundamental problem with Genesis 1 (and thus, creation: including animals). If Man did not exist yet, who was observing the creation? How did man come to know about it?
The obvious theological answer was that God and/or angels told someone about it between Adam and Moses (inclusive). The problem with many of Gods (OT) explanations is that they tend to be in dreams and visions, which aren't usually literal. If it was angels, then surely we got the simplified version. "Ooh, ooh! Tell me again about the divergence of Lorises and Pottos!" "Sigh. Listen, kid, he just made them, OK?"
All this arguing over evolution is silly. Faith does not need it, but that doesn't mean that it outright contradicts faith.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The reason there are lots of politicians hell-bent on teaching Intelligent Design is really very similar to the reason the muslim world is currently the most fundamentalist on the planet: there is a perverse incentive in re-enforcing religious dogma. We will take Texas first because its easier, and for the most part, more familiar. Currently in large swaths of Texas "religious" is conflated with "good" and "moral". Therefore, anyone who wants power has to present themselves as being Christian, and thus "good" and "moral". Of course if you claim you are Gods warrior, anything you do in His name is justified, and thus you can plunder and steal as much as you want. Provided of course you are still rabidly defending "God". However if you start to weaken peoples fervent religious devotion and encourage them to think for themselves, well then they probably are a bit more likely to call you out for having your hand in the cookie jar, no matter how holy you claim to be.
The situation is very similar in the Islamic world as well, with the huge amount of oil money coming in perhaps even exacerbating it. A lot of people(chief among them hardcore Christians) point to Quranic verses etc as proof that Islam is unable to modernize, but in reality, with one important exception(which I will get to later), the rules between the Abrahamic religions are very similar. The only difference is that modern Muslims actually adhere to them, whereas very few Christians actually follow the bible with any sort of rigor.
The obvious question of course then is why? If the religions are fundamentally the same, why the discrepancy in how closely modern believers follow the rules? The answer again lies in perverse incentives. The fact that the industrial revolution was born in Europe gave Muslim leaders and interesting case study, what happens to religious leaders when society "modernizes"? The answer is that in most of the Western world(with the rural US pretty much being the only real exception) religious leaders went from the top of the social pyramid to near the bottom in a very short period of time. Muslim leaders like being at the top of the pyramid, especially since the aforementioned difference between the religions, the acceptance of polygamy by most Islamic societies, mean that being at the bottom of the social period means that you will have very few chances to get married(and in conservative societies, that often translates to very few opportunities to have sex). So you better believe that they will resist social modernization as much as possible.
Long story short, if someone is vilifying science and praising religion, they are doing it solely for the sake of their own pocket book(and perhaps marital bed)
Monstar L
If your faith cant stand a test. It wasn't very strong.
I still can't believe we don't treat religion as a mental illness. You go around tellin everyone an invisible guy watches you all the time and tells you what to do.... They lock you up. You call that invisible guy god... And that's just a ok fine. Here have some tax exempt status.
Religion is one of the major things holding back the human race. The faster we wise up the better.
As someone who views herself as a fundamental christian (and at one time parroted the creationism agenda), let me state that if God did choose to create via evolution, great! (When studying genetic algorithms way back, I imagined a sufficiently advanced "candidate solution" (read: self-aware, thinking, communicating) belittling another for believing in a "Programmer".) There are a few issues with creationist's explanation of Genesis that gloss over some obvious points in the text. There are also some problems with evolutionist's view of the evolution of homo sapiens, which may better be explained by the roughly 6000 years timespan given for the existence of Adam. (However, these issues themselves have a bearing on both traditional christian and contemporary political dogma, which explains why discussing them in a religious context would be avoided.)
My view of the typical american evangelical movement and it's copious output of media, is that it's largely a money-making business, where control over the consumers increases profits. It's often a materialistic theology, far removed from the spiritual. Unfortunately on the other hand there are some vocal scientists too with an anti-religious agenda, that is not really born out by science, only by sophistry.
Religion and science do not stand in opposition to each other, nor should one "find some balance/tradeoff" between the two. Both the study of creation (science) and the study of the Creator (religion) should be taken to it's fullest - only then can one arrive at the same answer for both.
Re Why are we even having this conversation?
It turns science in to just another humanities subject and real environmental pollution into ~ "conversations with heavy industry".
The faster science is watered down the less you have to worry about "work" by epidemiologists, statisticians, and public health staff.
Most importantly the next generation will not even want to understand the word epidemiologists.
State govs can save on science teaching, pollution testing and any technical/professional expertise.
Heavy industry can go on without filters or site remediation.
People of faith vote for 'their' winning political team. Creationism is just the cover term for a lot of educational changes to defund expensive science.
Your down to one fixed text, a dry-erase board and some seating/desks. No more labs, chemicals, staffing costs, new computers, field trips, expensive new text books...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Electrons move around a nuclei the same way planets move around suns
If you believe that you'll believe anything. This model of atomic structure hasn't been valid for almost a century. If you're going to talk about science, at least try to keep up with it.
> Electrons move around a nuclei the same way planets move around suns
Not even remotely. This idea was proposed back when humans had no understanding of subatomic behavior, and they were drawing assumptions based things they did know, like the solar system. If you want to actually know how electrons and nuclei behave, try to wrap your mind around quantum mechanics. It's almost impossible as it bears little resemblance to anything else you might be familiar with.
It's an interesting example, though, because it illustrates how whenever humans don't know what they're talking about, they fill in the gaps with things that are familiar. Like chariots carrying fire through the sky and an anthropomorphic God creating the universe.
From there your comment just goes further off the rails. Nobody thinks they're "smarter than everyone else". But observation and reason let us learn about the world, and we've learned over and over that mankind's notion of God is always several steps behind our observational understanding. Everything that has improved in the past two centuries has been at the hands of man. We're slowly figuring out ways to improve our lot in life. God's word was around for thousands of years before the enlightenment and didn't improve anything.
The universe is amazing, and every facet fills me with awe. But that doesn't mean there needs to be a personality behind it. I can take it for what it is without having to project my ideas of meaning onto it.
From the article: '[W]hat is true is that evolution tests faith. The fact of evolution is incontrovertible and supported by mounds of empirical evidence.
1. It is not a fact that human beings evolved from primordial goo. That would be an unsubstantiated assertion based on an extreme extrapolation of limited evidence of small-scale phenomena.
2. Therefore, "evolution" only tests misguided faith. In fact, even the idea that humans evolved from goo is not ultimately incompatible with faith in God or in intelligent design. This is because the point of ID/Creationism is not how God created, but that God created.
The idea that the Creation stories in Genesis are meant to literally describe how God created is another matter entirely, and it is the blind insistence upon this presupposition that results in so much hot air being expelled on both sides of the issue.
Faith, on the other hand, is fragile. It is supported only by the strength of human will. And this is where it gets tricky. Because to many believers, faith, not works, is the only guarantee that one can pass God's litmus test and gain access to His divine kingdom. To lose one's faith is to literally damn oneself.
That's because that's what Christ said. "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned." Mk 16:16
So tests to that faith must be avoided at all costs. Better to be a philosophical coward than a theological failure.
Many people's faith is, sadly, based on fragile ideas like Creation stories being literal, or every word written in the Bible being intended literally. To those people, their faith would be quite jeopardized by atheists yelling loudly that there is no God, that the Bible is wrong, that we evolved from goo, etc.
Other people's faith may be based on rational thinking, such as the ideas that the universe or living beings are too complex to have happened randomly, or that the evidence of Christ's resurrection is strong. Such faith can handle Creation stories not necessarily being literal, and the idea of evolution, and the idea of the Bible being inspired by God yet composed by humans and therefore not literally perfect (or always literal).
It is a popular--and recent--misconception that faith and reasoning are incompatible. Many, if not most, of the great minds of the ages were believers in God or in other forms of religion. The idea that religious people are necessarily irrational fools is simply a lie; there are plenty of both religious and atheistic people who are irrational fools.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
A man of faith is someone who accepts anything his religion tells him without question.
In other words a fecking idiot.
Go well
yes...this is the answer to the questions posed by TFA
it's about money and dumbing people down to make them better consumers
in America today, one form it takes is fundmentalist religious people fighting science on religious grounds...
another form is the 'pink washing' of the breast cancer causes....we know now that certain plastic food containers cause breast cancer...so the companies that use those very plastics (which are not illegal) actually contribute to Susan G. Komen and get a little pink ribbon on their logo...
it's taking advantage of people's failings for profit
religion is just the vector in this case
Thank you Dave Raggett
You and the author of TFA take a mind-numbingly reductive framing of the issue and it just causes **more** arguments and solidifies the opposition harder...
Your first problem is that you take the word of an idiot.
These Texas book controversies...they **defy all logic**. You'd agree and so would TFA's author. People have written tomes on this very discussion thread that impressively elucidate the sub-moronic notions of these wackos...
Yet you just **assume** that their words can be taken at face value that they truly are describing their reasons for pushing these textbooks.
And it's about textbooks, and public education and society in general here...if these people just kept their mouth shut and let professionals write the text you'd have *no gripe* with their dumbness...
No...YOU are an idiot for **taking their stated reasons seriously**
You do exactly what they want, fall into the predictable opposition mode...
WHICH HELPS THEM SELL MORE FUCKING TEXTBOOKS
This really is about money pure and simple....there is a built-in market for these textbooks and in the greater sense suppressing science helps corporations avoid accountability on a host of issues...
religion is only a *vector* in this instance
stop playing their fool's game
Thank you Dave Raggett
Theories that humanity was "seeded" by aliens are a non-theological example of Intelligent Design theory.
In their 1966 book "Intelligent Life in the Universe" I.S. Shklovski and Carl Sagan present a good case for scientists and historians to consider the possibility of early contact between life on Earth and extraterrestrials. Intelligent Design is not a concept that is owned part and parcel by creationists.
That said... I have a problem with teaching Intelligent Design in public schools. I'm a creationist... I believe the truth of the Bible. I also don't believe it is the job of government to indoctrinate students in religion. Mine or anyone else's.
There was a time where teaching students of science the theory of Spontaneous Generation was perfectly legitimate. It was "good science" based on the best information that was available at the time that the theory was still viable. Evolution is the best scientific theory that explains the evidence as we have it right now. And so it should be the theory taught to science students. Perhaps one day evidence may arise to discredit evolution but that day has not come. If parents want to teach their children alternate views they are welcome to do so via religious education, private education or homeschooling. Presenting alternate views that have little or no hard evidence is unwarranted.
Not confronting the evidence for Evolution is intellectual dishonesty at best and intellectual sloth at worst.
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
I get chills when I see phrases like:
The fact of evolution is incontrovertible
I 100% believe the theory of evolution provides the best fit with the available data. But stating any theory is a "fact" and "incontrovertible" is just too far. One of the issues is that it is hard to experimentally falsify the thoery of evolution. Either we are scientists and honest about what we do, or we are not. Get off my lawn.
There's nothing wrong with pointing to gaps. That's what science is all about.
True
And there's nothing wrong with suggesting God as one candidate theory to explain a gap. All theories are allowed.
False, if you are talking about scientific theories. Let me quote:
A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on knowledge that has been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experimentation.
That's why the "God theory" is not a theory, and why ID is completely incompatible with the scientific method.
Science can't work with untestable theories, but unfortunately that's not the same as proving them false. We could be unlucky. The truth might be beyond our testing. There's no harm in facing that possibility.
Just mention a few other candidates besides God to explain the gaps. And show some examples of what used to be gaps, that have now been filled in. Now you've got a science course, that covers everything that ID supporters can ask to cover.
Unfortunately that doesn't work in practice, because you end up teaching that any idea can be considered a scientific theory, and that is completely false. Yes, one could say
There are some people who think X, Y and Z, but that's just unsubstantiated ideas
and see the wrath of ID'ers strike down on you. No religious person would want their "theories" to be associated with the "theory" that a great ball of pasta is what makes the world turn. Or that there is a pink unicorn whose dreams we inhabit.
You are confusing the layman's use of the word "theory" with the scientific meaning of the word. "Theory" in a scientific context means the best explanation available for which a preponderance of evidence exists. It does not mean "guess".
Groups of people bind best if they have some external threat to bind against. It's not the only way to maintain group cohesion and loyalty, but it sure helps.
It used to be that the devil (an invention chiefly of the medieval church, who found him very handy) performed this role. However, it's getting harder to convince people that there's this evil creature running about the place doing evil through magic. So he's fallen out of favour, So either a substitute is required, or at the very least a proxy.
That's where evolutionary science comes in. It's an attack on everything that your society, family and faith is based on! We must fight it! Come to church!
What also helps bind groups together admirably is the suggestion that they are an oppressed minority. It certainly helps when you really are an oppressed minority, but if you aren't, claiming you are is the next best thing. Hence the idea that christianity is under siege, when in many places it is the dominant cultural force that is sometimes the oppressor, not the oppressed. So the suggestion that liberals/guv'ment/heathens are forcing evolution on their helpless children is a powerful way of keeping the faithful in line.
France just introduced a secular charter for schools, a rough English translation of which is here. Amongst other good things, it states quite plainly that there is no religious opt-out for religious belief and no exclusions from the teaching of knowledge and science. Simply put, kids get taught good science and if it offends their parent's religious sensibilities (or the teacher's) then TOUGH.
I occasionally interact with people who are convinced that "evilution" is taught out of a desire to attack religion and make people into amoral monsters. And they will go on, at length, about their beliefs about the "motives" of scientists. And somehow, none of the motives they invent actually fit very well with anything I see when I talk to scientists. I mean, yes, I occasionally encounter people who really do seem to have those motives, but in general they're not particularly regarded well by the scientific community.
And I occasionally interact with people who have all sorts of really strange beliefs about the "motives" of religion, and similarly, what they say has very little to do with what I mostly encounter among religious people. Although I do occasionally encounter people who appear to have those motives, but they are not regarded well by the religious community.
It seems interesting to me how well these groups parallel each other, and how well each of them plays into the other's narrative of persecution or abuse. And how much both of them rely on the assumption that you can't ask people what they think, or why they think it. Slashdot tends to have more of the people who have a very naive view of what religious faith is, or why people have it, but I've hung around on other sites that tended towards the very naive view of science, and it was just as funny there.
So far as I can tell, in the real world, the majority of religious people have beliefs that are a lot more complicated, and a lot more coherent, than the strawmen that I mostly see attacked on Slashdot. But since they don't usually go around trying to get on TV news and insist that they are the only representatives of their faith, people are less aware of them. In general, most of the time if you know someone's religious beliefs, it's because they're jerks; the non-jerks won't generally get pushy about it and tell you all about it unless you actually ask what they think. And, of course, if you've made up your mind that they're all idiots and you don't want to know, then you're the jerk whose opinions they will take as representative of people who hold your beliefs. (This goes both ways.)
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
If you want to get down to it, 2+2=4 only works in a particular mathematical framework whose axioms are drawn from "common sense", i.e. socially and evolutionarily constructed heuristics. There's not many of those axioms, but if you change them - and there are plenty of branches of mathematics that do - you can indeed get 2+2 not equal to 4. No real point here, but it is an issue that has been addressed.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The funny thing is, Darwinian Evolution is wrong.
It was one of the first things a professor of Population Genetics taught us upon entering his class. No, not a hush-hush "Here's the real truth" conspiracy revelation -- rather, it was wrong in the sense that it represented a simplified sub-set of modern understanding. Evolutionary Theory had moved so far forward from Darwin's time, that those in the field referred to the current body of work as Neo-Darwinian Evolution, incorporating modern insights and knowledge that fundamentally changed our understanding.
For instance, consider Kimura's Theory of Neutral Evolution. You probably learned in grade school that most mutations are bad, and a few are good, right? Kimura posited that instead, a few are bad, a very few are good, but most do not affect an organism's fitness, they are "neutral". It sounds like a trivial observation, but it has enormous consequences for genetics as a statistical science. For instance, it is one of the vital components that contribute to the genetic signature of Linkage Disequilibrium, which allows us to spot selection pressure on the genetic scale, with the practical application of drawing our attention to portions of the genome likely to be interesting.
A large segment of the public sees Evolution as being a field of dusty bones, with little more consequence and applicability than Kipling's Just-so Stories. On the contrary, without evolutionary theory, nothing in the statistics of genetics makes sense; understand it allows you to make predictions vital to new hypothesis-forming, and in some cases even test them. A dynamic, fascinating field of study is being ignored in the debate, and that's the real tragedy.
Despite all the tongue in cheek stuff here on /., I have to wonder aloud how could evolution work at all?
Let's say that in order to make the evolutional move from one species to another, we have to cross a chromosome boundary. Some animals have 22, we have 23, right? So if an animal with 22 mutated and was accidentally born with 23, it could not breed with it's brethren. Unless another animal was similarly mutated to have 23 chromosomes. What is the likelihood that two mutated animals would even live in close enough proximity to one another to successfully mate?
I tend to think that an intelligent being whom we know as God created successive and improved series of creatures. Sure there can be evolution by natural selection within a species, but not across the chromosome boundary. Of course I also tend to think that God is much more tangible than spiritual.
Of course we then have to wonder how God came into existence.
Ok, I haven't lived in Texas for 2 decades now, but I was also born there, went to college there, etc..
A relatively small group of religious conservatives have somehow taken over the Board of Education.
Just how this happened, and why people put up with it, is something I cannot explain. Sure, Texas has it's share of religious whack jobs, but really no more than (and possibly fewer than) many other states a bit farther to the north and east.
What's worse is that Texas has also become the state that many other states look to, to set a baseline for what textbooks their schools will use.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
But a story about a 600 year old man and his sons building a boat with bronze age technology to hold every life form on the planet with sufficient genetic diversity to prevent inbreeding with a year of supplies, collecting them from every remote corner of the planet, and returning them all to their native habitat afterwards (which somehow wasn't destroyed by the flood) makes perfect sense. From polar bears to penguins, koalas and kangaroos to the Inaccessible Island rail, a flightless bird. Over 8000 species of ants alone. Don't forget the fresh water tanks for any aquatic life that wouldn't survive when salt water flooded their habitat. Returning all those fresh water life forms back to their home lakes and ponds all over the world afterwards must have been some trouble....
Honestly, I have an easier time believing a bearded man in a red suit comes down a billion chimneys on Christmas eve delivering toys.
My rights don't need management.
It hasn't been about whether evolution is true or false for a very long time. It's about whose team you're on and how many points they're up by in the third quarter. Texans can't help themselves. They have to pick a side, and when they do they support it all the way.
Go to any small town in East Texas on a Friday night in September. Around 7PM, folks start streaming out of their houses and heading to stadiums whose size rivals that of some colleges' playing fields. They're there to rally their team on, violently if necessary.
Texans choose sides in ALL aspects of their lives. Ford vs. Chevy. Big Mac vs. the Whopper. Citizens vs. Illegals. Cattlemen vs. Farmers. Evolution vs. Creationism. Whatever the issue, no matter how weighty or how trivial, Texans can figure out a way to polarize it and turn it into a contest. And if it has team jerseys, all the better.
In some ways, this is Texas' greatest strength - that its citizens are willing to stake everything on the team they support, win, lose, or draw. In other ways, the stubborn unwillingness to give up, even in the face of overwhelming strength or indisputable argument can lead to, well I think we all remember the Alamo.
People tend to think of the idea of "teaching the controversy" as an insidious effort to get religion's foot in the door. In fact, it's one of the most amazing things that Team Texas Religion has ever done- offer a compromise. For a Texan to even admit that the other side's point of view EXISTS is jaw-droppingly astounding. To offer to teach it alongside their own is nothing short of miraculous.
The only way to resolve this conflict is to understand Texas and embrace its stubborn, contentious, headstrong culture. Ignoring it will only make the issue worse. The sooner people realize this, the better off we'll all be. Texas, as much as we hate to admit it East of the Mississippi, isn't all that different from the rest of the country.
I don't have time to type up an entire paper on this or anything as I have got to run out the door for work, but. Evolutionist have faith also. For example, to overcome the delicate balance that is needed for life to exist evolutionist have invented the multiverse. We just happen to be one of an infinite number of universes out there that just happened to get all the combinations correct. Evolutionists are always saying something like "Show me your God." Well, I say show me one of these other universes. Oh, but you can't because there is even a get out of jail clause in the multiverse theory for the evolutionists that says something to the effect of, the universe is expanding faster then the speed of light therefor we will never be able to see one of the other universe despite have the best possible equipment at the time. At least I believe I will eventually see God, your theory says you will never get to see one of the other universes and just accept it on blind faith.
I feel it would be helpful to pause, step back... way back and draw some comparisons to another rather significant paradigm shift.
Today, grab someone of (Abrahamic) faith and ask them how they can believe in their holy text(s), nay how they can even have faith at all, given that we now know the Earth revolves around the Sun rather than other way around. With a very high degree of likelihood, this person will look at you like you're crazy. Indeed, how often have you heard folk clamoring that Epicycles be taught alongside Kepler? Why not? Why not teach both and let the children decide?
The funny thing is that this is exactly what was going on a few hundred years ago. We've been here before. Let me repeat that. It may seem ridiculous today. But this same sort of controversy raged over the sun and planets in much the same fashion. It's hard to draw too many parallels because of the differences in political, education and religious institutions. But you can BET if we'd just figured this out now, you absolutely would have the same patterns. So let's pause and think about the past...
It took about two hundred years to plod through this controversy to get to the point where nobody questioned things, nobody fought for Aristotle over Copernicus, nobody worried how to interpret Joshua 10 in light of our new understanding. TWO HUNDRED YEARS.
I would not be surprised if it takes this long for us to move beyond this controversy over Evolution. Furthermore, I fully expect the result to be largely the same. At some point Young Earth Creationism in all its forms will fade into a distant memory. The modern forces seem just to cancel themselves out. On the one hand, all relevant information is incredibly available. But on the other hand, the Internet fosters filter bubbles. Nonetheless, there are plenty of signs that we'll progress through this... eventually.
Will faith disappear? Will religions just fold up? Not at all. Again, looking back at the Copernican Revolution as a guide, everyone will just move on.
It's really not any more crazy to believe the earth is 6000 years old than it is to believe in the Bible and that Jesus was the son of God. In fact I would say it's orders of magnitude more likely that the Earth is 6000 years old than the idea that Jesus was anything more than a regular human being if he even existed at all.
Sorry, but you're gonna have to do a little better than pejorative rhetoric to be taken seriously by the opposing side. And please check your facts - almost all historians believe a man named Jesus from Nazareth existed. There isn't much debate about that.
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
Agnostics deal in facts. Atheists deal in beliefs. Christians deal in beliefs. It's one of the cruel irony's of the world. An agnostic takes no issue with faith by his very nature.
Funny how we don't talk about agnostics when it comes to vampires, fairies, Zeus, or any number of other things, but when it comes to "God", all of a sudden if you hold the belief that "God" doesn't exist and is instead mythology like all the other crap you don't believe in, you aren't dealing in facts.
The facts are the evidence doesn't support a lot of the bullshit you find in the Bible. The facts are that there are a lot of religions around the world, with conflicting beliefs based on similar crap evidence. If the "God" of the Bible really wanted to make himself known, to be worshiped, to have certain rules followed, etc, then masquerading as man-made mythology is a really stupid plan.
I have every ounce of respect for Agnostics. Atheists in most cases are people with self-esteem issues.
So you respect people who are either too afraid or naive to take the same step they do for all other kinds of mythology and superstition, but think it's just a lack of self-esteem that leads to atheism. Right.
Disclaimer: I'm an ex-Muslim
Disclaimer: There's lots of interpretations of Islam. I'm just telling you my history with it
However, the intelligent design stuff if very familiar to me. In Islam, we were always taught that there is no conflict between science and religion. This makes us different from Christianity. God made gravity. God made plants. If there's aliens, God made aliens. The sun and the moon all rotate perfectly because of God's amazing creation.
Whenever a new scientific fact came up, religious leaders rushed to find any kind of vague wording that would show that Islam thought of it first... or that it is perfectly compatible.
The key point here is that in my life with Islam, there was never a conflict between science and religion. All the science existed because God created the universe and all the rules and mysteries...
So why are people hell bent on teaching intelligent design? Well, at the core, it takes all the scientific facts of evolution... and then says... God guided it.
It tries to remove the grand inconsistency between science and religion.
Now, let me be clear, I understand the nuances of the differences. Intelligent design makes it's case on showing that gaps in the evolutionary history point to an intelligent designer. This is a huge point.
However, look at it another way. Intelligent design is basically evolution with a little disclaimer saying 'god did it'. It is certainly better to teach intelligent design than to teach creationism. At least you get some into the actual science of evolution, the fossils, the species, the mutations...
It helps the god-fearing folks to come into the world of science without losing their faith.
I think you really need to step back and look at the big picture.
Education is something that ultimately raises kids. You cannot separate education from values. This is why every tyrant, every political group, every parent, every culture... wants control of education. You control education, you control the kids.
In the case of evolution, sure, you might think it is all about science. But in terms of the greater social battle for our kids, you'd be naive to think it is just about teaching science. The schools are always a battle ground for the values in society. And it will be fought there.
I'm not saying, we shouldn't teach outright evolution in schools. I believe it to be absolutely true. I'm just trying to explain why it is such a threat and why intelligent design is to tempting to teach. You could even see it in a more structured way. That it is a way to bring a scientific concept to a religious community. It helps reduce social tensions and battles for the schools. It helps transition away from the view of pure creationism.
Value based changes take decades and often multiple generations. Let's not pretend otherwise or ignore that evidence.
Slashdotter here, who disbelieves evolution.
Well that's pretty silly: evolution has been observed. From colour changes to speciation to the evolution of new biochemical processes.
Perhaps you were thinking about, well, what were you thinking about?
As for "evolution is incontrovertible" argument...
Wekk, yeah. It's been seen happening. You might question the whys and the causes, but simply dismissing evidence is beyond silly.
"Entropy and Evolution"
Have you actually read that paper? The person firstly confuses ambiogenesis (the initial event at which non life became life) and evolution. He's also tying himself in knots by using physics names. The thing is crystallization is a spectacular decrease in entropy too and is explained from something from the outside too: the outside being a heat sink. He clearly is massively overinterpreting the second law and has no understanding of it.
- "A Second Look at the Second Lawâ,
Basically the same paper. Not surprising it wasn't published in a maths journal: there's no maths apart from restating some well known equations.
It's also the same flaw:
He claims:
``if an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is closed, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable''
Which is easily dismissed. A hot blob of mineral is extremely unlikely to turn into a crystal in a closed system since it won't cool and therefore won't crystallise. In a (cool) open system, it is very likely to crystallise since it will loose heat, yet nothing is required to enter.
Generations past have accepted the sun as been the day's source of light, and the moon the night's. Are their identical sizes (identical as far as our eyes are concerned) a massive coincidence? Or evidence of design.
It's only exactly the right size at a particular point in the orbit. Sometimes annular eclipses occur when the sun is closer and the moon further away. So, it's a good coincidence, but not quite so perfect as you assume.
- If you saw a exponential decay curve (i.e. a long tail curve), with the tail quite apparently truncated at some point, would you assume an event likely caused the truncation?
Depends what it was a measurement of. If, for example it was a measurement of a non-continuous quantity, then I'd assume the last one had gone. For example, measuring the decay of a very small number of atoms. ...trees...
There are only a handful of trees left of that age. No way an exponential curve would be smooth with that little data.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This model of atomic structure hasn't been valid for almost a century.
That's a sugar-coated way of saying that this model was wrong, and scientists had been believing the wrong thing up until less than a century ago.
You scientists sure know your way around words.
I think this comment succinctly sums up the differing frame of mind between faith and science.
With faith, the most fundamentally important thing that you can do it not change your mind. If new evidence arises that challenges your worldview, you are obligated to ignore it or discredit it or... anything but let it shake your worldview. Changing your mind is acceptance of having been wrong, which is the ultimate admission of failure.
Science, on the other hand, represents a dedication to discovering the truth. Being closer to correct now is more important than pretending that you knew the correct answer all along. If you find evidence that your previous model was wrong, you are obligated to change your model to fit all available data and be correct now. There's no shame in having been wrong in the past. There is shame in deliberately being wrong now.
The troll AC bring up science's greatest strength as a failure is a strong sign that there will not be a reconciling between people who are ruled by one mindset or the other.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Any large group has dregs. The Christian faith contains many types of people from geniuses to people who are almost fit to be in a shelter for the learning disabled. those that take every word in the Bible literally are the bottom of the waste basket in the faith. It does not even cross their minds that God could use evolution to create the universe and all that are in it. The faith is upheld by those able to understand what a wonderful, lovable, doctrine that was brought forth by Christian teachings. The New Testament is a radical departure from any prior faith or thought system. It is miraculous in its doctrines as well as a miracle in its linguistic construction. The NT may well be the highest use of language arts of any document in all of history. Portions of the Old Testament also demonstrate linguistic and philosophic sophistication never seen before or since its creation. The fruits of the Christian faith alone prove it to be of miraculous quality. Yet all the primitives can see are half sentences that they spew out of context.
You've got a lot of factual oversights and selective omissions here. I'm not a physicist, so I can't comment on the astronomy matters, but I do know about the rest. I have a feeling you're a troll and you don't actually believe any of this, but let's see if we can set the record straight at least a little.
The known mutations in the human genome divided by the mutation rate shows that humans were mutation free...6000 years ago and that all women on earth share the same mother.
The human genome is nothing but mutations, all 3.1 billion bases of it. We can compare the human genome to the Chimpanzee genome and meticulously reconstruct all of the differences and indeed the whole history of changes between the two. Mitochondrial Eve only affects a very small part of the human genome, the mitochondrion, which we also share with all other animals on the planet (as well as plants, fungi, and protists), and dates back to at least 140,000 years ago, not 6,000 years ago. I would be more than happy to devastate you with further discussions about evolutionary history.
Everything on earth still has Carbon-14 in it. Instead of explaining this as "background carbon", the Occam's Razor answer is that everything is less than 10,000 years old.
The background noise in radiocarbon dating is caused by nuclear testing, cosmic radiation, and spontaneous decay. This can be demonstrated under controlled conditions. Occam's Razor requires that all evidence be accounted for. (Do you propose we just pretend nuclear testing didn't happen, or that nuclei don't emit neutrons when they decay?) Keep in mind that C-14 is very rare, only accounting for a trillionth of all carbon on the planet. It's not as if there's a whole bunch of the stuff that came out of nowhere. It's stochastically normal for spontaneous decay to occur at that frequency. Even with the background levels, radiocarbon dating is useful up to about 60,000 years ago, six times longer than you suggest.
Every culture talks about dragons as if they are real, but we have mythologized them. Why? Creationists believe the simpler answer is that dinosaurs are dragons.
All dragon myths have been traced to regions that have crocodiles. Crocodiles are scary.
No intermediate forms, almost at all. Virtually every fossil is a modern-day creature as is.
This is just clear misinformation; there are relatively few living fossils. Almost all fossils are of extinct species—like the ground sloth, the Hallucigenia spiny worm, and seventeen thousand species of trilobite. Also, doesn't that conflict with your obsession with dinosaurs?
Every culture talks about a flood, almost always one in which a guy often named something akin to "Noah" saves some combination of himself, his wife, his family and a bunch of animals with the help of his god. How do they all get this story when they didn't talk to each other.
But they did talk to each other; there were trade routes from Greece to Ireland in the 8th century BC. The legend of Noah is clearly derived from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Doesn't that mean you should worship the Sumerian pantheon?
So to me, the better question is why censor creationism? If it's so wrong, won't that be easily seen by everyone?
Creationism was rejected by mainstream Christianity precisely because it depends on heaps of factually inaccurate statements. Neither the Anglican Church nor the Catholic Church believes any of the bullshit you're spinning. It is dangerous precisely for the reasons outlined in the news article on which we're commenting: because it claims to offer cowards a better chance of avoiding Hel
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Most Prostestant churches view the Apocrapha as having some value as a secondary source, but do not consider it to be equal to the Bible. The "Book of Mormon", on the other hand, is considered heresy.
Unless you're a Mormon.
That's the problem with faith. Let's assume I suddenly wanted to be a Christian. I suddenly have a heart full of faith.
Which one do I choose?
Faith is belief without proof. And all religions have no proof. So how do you choose?
Same problem you describe with the bible. These books are in, these ones are out. These guys add this part in and these guys leave it out. Everyone thinks differently and everyone thinks they're correct. That's the "bug" with faith. No proof means you can reach any conclusion you wish, since no proof is required.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
And are you really going to act as if our society's disdain for incest, murder, theft and lying has nothing to do with the bible? Because if you do, you're living in a fantasy world.
You've either said something a) profound or b) drug-induced here.
I'm going with mostly b, not much a.
I concur
The planetary model, or analogy is still used in basic teaching of atomic structure because it approximates the way things appear to behave and it's easy to learn.