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Americans' Evolution Knowledge Isn't That Bad, If You Ask About Elephants (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: In 2014, a poll showed that just 49% of Americans agreed with the statement: "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." But it's difficult to tell whether those numbers measure ignorance about science, because belief in human evolution is closely tied to religious belief, especially in the United States. Yesterday, researchers at the annual meeting of AAAS, previewed data from a recent poll showing that when the word "human" is replaced with "elephant" in the evolution question, 75% of Americans agree — about 25 percentage points higher than before. Plus, the new elephant question does a better job of predicting general science knowledge than the human question, especially among those who say they don't believe in evolution. So it seems that America's dismal performance on past evolution polls can be blamed at least partially on this disbelief, rather than a lack of knowledge.
The 75% number about elephants is still shockingly bad.
Religion is poison for the mind, it is arsenic, meth, cocaine and cyanide of the mind, it is the murderer of intelligence, destroyer of sound logic and of critical thought.
Of-course people are free to believe whatever they want to believe, but I think it is fair to treat all religions and supernatural belief systems, so called 'spirituality' as toxins that destroy thinking abilities in ways that may be even worse than simple narcotics.
You can't handle the truth.
First of all, any question that is couched in "belief" is basically a religious question, even if it is about a scientific topic.
Second, of all, a vague profession of "belief" in Evolution* is being made into a nonsensical substitute for OMG IF YOU FAIL THIS TEST THEN YOU HAVE REJECTED ALL SCIENCE FOREVER.
Riddle me this, please tell me how failure to profess the politically-correct "belief" in evolution means you can't do any of the following:
1. Design nanoscale materials.
2. Detect gravitational waves.
3. Successfully perform brain surgery.
4. Sucessfully launch a spacecraft.
* The religion of Global Warming is used as a similar litmus test, although it's now possible even for previously "approved" scientists to be burned at the stake for failing to "believe" in bad Sci-Fi movie of the week apocalyptic global warming.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I'm not sure this is the gotcha it's obviously meant to be. That ~half of creationists who think that humans didn't evolve but elephants did isn't terribly surprising.
Americans evolved into elephants. Then they went on social security disability because they were "too fat to work"
politically-correct "belief" in evolution
There's nothing political about it. Just cold hard science. And the same applies to global warming.
Most people don't even know the difference between evolution and natural selection. When asked what that difference is, many will insist it's the same thing. Most people also equate evolution with constant improvement, even though that's not really what it is.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Because if you can't draw conclusions from evidence you're not going to be able to use science.
If we don't want to be preachy religious types, and we don't want to be preachy Science! types, why would we talk about it at all? Besides being the newest, hipest way to try to divide otherwise happy people into warring tribes, what's the goal of polling people about evolution?
Also, is it good or evil to try to divide otherwise happy, peacefully coexisting people into warring tribes?
The blurb - actually a paragraph plagiarized verbatim from Science magazine, tsk - suggests that disbelief does not entail lack of knowledge. Can that be? Among epistemologists the near-consensus is that belief is one of the necessary ingredients of knowledge. I'd be curious how we are supposed to understand knowledge coupled with disbelief of the thing that's allegedly known.
Christians understand that the cold Virus mutates and that we have multiple breeds of dogs though selection and that species can slowly adapt to there environment. Maybe an elephant and a wooly mammoth had a common ancestor. But they don't believe God made a fish and now its a Dog. Furthermore, God places quite a distinction between man and the animals. Maybe the question isn't specific enough. Heck there is still so much discussion on the canis family as to if they should really be considered separate species do to the man made definition of a speciies. There are some humans even that can't breed with each other.
Willful ignorance is far worse than simple ignorance.
It is obvious to anyone that elephants evolved form wooly mammoths
It might be obvious, but it's wrong. They both have a common ancestor, one did not evolve from the other. The same thing goes for humans and other extant apes.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
You can have knowledge of something you don't believe.
This is completely wrong. "Science" is a method where you make predictions and then test them, and update them based off the imperial evidence. If don't understand that "I have to believe in things that are imperially proven even if they don't agree with my world view / religion / personal ideals" then you don't have any knowledge of science. You have opinions about things.
The 25% of people who ignore the evidence that humans evolved but accept it for elephants are no better at science then the people who don't believe either.
This video just came to my attention a few days ago, and describes this situation incredibly well: https://youtu.be/Y201QzDdzbg
Riddle me this, please tell me how failure to profess the politically-correct "belief" in evolution means you can't do any of the following:
1. Design nanoscale materials.
You can't see little things, much less manipulate them. If you don't evolve your methods, then you will still be using stone hammers. The stone tends to be dirty and dusty, so the dust will contaminate your nanomaterials. Obsidian knives, while sort of mono molecular-ish, are not a material you design.
2. Detect gravitational waves.
Lack of tools that evolved from stone age materials means you don't have glass, much less finely drawn wire needed for primitive telescopes and radio detection, much less modern equivalent.
3. Successfully perform brain surgery.
Stone tools make poor drills, and a failure to understand the evolution of spirits to dirt to germs living in dirt (aka bacteria/virus etc) means post op infection will kil the patient.
4. Sucessfully launch a spacecraft.
Aside from a lack of electrical systems, optics, metallurgy, chemistry and every other obvious to everyone but nutters (or poseur trolls) like you? If we didn't evolve complex language, we couldn't communicate enough to organize efforts on indirect/abstract concepts.
Science is great because it teaches about reality. Gravity will pull you down whether or not you believe in it.
Science is not a religion because science is falsifiable. Find a place on earth where gravity empirically doesn't apply and we'll all agree to update our handbook. You are so brainwashed that you can't conceive of a way that your book could have a transcription error, much less resolve the cognitive dissonance in the contradictions in it.
If we are in a plane about to crash, you can take the bible/koran/prayer rug. I'll take the parachute. We can discuss who is right after the plane crashes in a fireball. You can even have my parachute after to search it for angels.,
Knowledge of the science is not the same as "knowing it is true". I can know what the bible says without believing it.
Writing a good survey is hard, since question order may influence the questions that follow. Consider:
- Did humans evolve from an earlier animal ?
- Did elephants evolve from an earlier animal?
vs
- Did elephants evolve from an earlier animal?
- Did humans evolve from an earlier animal ?
The numbers given to 'did humans evolve', would likely be different based on whether the elephant question was asked before or after. It is not simply a question of which questions are asked.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Second, of all, a vague profession of "belief" in Evolution* is being made into a nonsensical substitute for OMG IF YOU FAIL THIS TEST THEN YOU HAVE REJECTED ALL SCIENCE FOREVER.
Riddle me this, please tell me how failure to profess the politically-correct "belief" in evolution means you can't do any of the following: 1. Design nanoscale materials. 2. Detect gravitational waves. 3. Successfully perform brain surgery. 4. Sucessfully launch a spacecraft.
None one credible would claim religious belief prevents successful scientific research. Most significant scientific research up until perhaps 50-100 years ago was performed by religious people. The questions is whether this religious belief slows or prevents some scientific research that would have been successful if not for religion.
Neil Degrasse Tyson gave an arguably perfect lecture describing the dangers of religious convictions affecting the scientific research. One of his best examples was of the scientist he respects the most: Isaac Newton. Even one of the greatest scientists of all time limited the scope of his research once he decided only God could describe the movement of celestial bodies.
If celestial mechanics can be affected by the same religious belief that encourages the rejection of evolution, there are probably no fields of science that cannot be affected.
Successfully perform brain surgery.
I hope the success of a weak minded man like Ben Carson in the field of neurosurgery is enough to show that field has far more to do with hard work than it does with the kind of rational thought necessary for scientific research. Just because neurosurgeons are highly paid does not mean they should be confused with neuroscientists.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
This shows that at least 26% of the populace isn't smart enough for one reason or another to draw a parallel with evolution overall.
Most people, even "educated" people, know next to nothing about biology or evolution; when you ask them "do you believe in evolution", the question is really no more meaningful than "do you believe in God" or "do you believe that the Pope is secretly homosexual": the people to ask have no meaningful, rational basis on which to answer it, all they can do is say whether people they trust have told them that it's true. And for various reasons, Americans trust government experts less than Europeans. I consider that a good thing.
Susan Blackmore gives definitive explanation of what evolution is all about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
the talk covers it in the first 3 minutes and then goes on to things that are just as fascinating, but i won't spoil that for you :-)
specificity? Great! Now I will no longer think that my coworkers are insane: who believe that a perfect god came down from the sky, born as a human, and died at the hands of other humans to appease himself that we were absolved from his judgement. Then he came back to life after three days and ran away back to the sky daddy, and that perfect god's chosen people lived happily ever after, except for a genocide or two, and somehow a ghost is involved.
As long as they can get their next fix of [insert TV show/shows/sports of choice], mega sized portions of fast food.
These studies are a waste of time.
Better cast them all off into the sea. Humanity will be a better place without their DNA.
I'd be curious how we are supposed to understand knowledge coupled with disbelief of the thing that's allegedly known.
I have knowledge of copper and oxygen and what wires do. That does not mean I believe that deoxygenated copper audio cables distort the signals they carry less than regular old copper ones.
I have knowledge of hydrogen generators and automotive fuel systems and the claims of some that feeding an engine hydrogen split from water by the automotive 12V system will improve gas milage, but I do not believe those claims.
I have knowledge of a person called Orenthal James Simpson, that there was a glove that was soaked in a water-based fluid that did not fit his hand during a contrived courtroom stunt, and a claim that since the glove did not fit, he was not guilty of a charge of killing his wife. And yet I do not believe that his failure to get the glove onto his hand means he was innocent.
I have knowledge of pigments and brush styles, of men through history who have applied pigments to canvas in a manner that many find pleasing, and yet I do not necessarily believe that any specific one of them actually applied the pigments to the canvas of the object I am looking at just because the result looks like something they might have done.
I have knowledge of coins and probability and can calculate the odds of certain results, and even though I know that there is a 1/64 chance of six coin flips all coming up "heads", I still do not believe that a recent set of six coin flips was the unlikely result of chance.
And finally, I have knowledge of a speedometer in my car that has "140" as the highest marking on the dial, but I do not believe for a second that my car, even when brand new, would achieve that speed.
It is quite trivial to have knowledge of basic processes and claims about how those processes combine to make a larger system, and yet disbelieve that those processes are how the existing system came to be.
My belief is humans, were conceived in "God's image". That is my belief, you can believe it, not believe something else.
See subject: That said & aside, God being perfect too? He'd build an adaptive mechanism that does so to survive. In his wisdom God accounted for evolving for survival... no questions asked.
* Blows my mind that ANYONE could be so arrogant as to NOT allow God that much smarts... since if a puny mortal like ME can realize it? So can others.
Yes folks - see my subject, realize it's truth - God built living things to evolve to adapt to survive.
APK
P.S.=> I can't understand WHY "religious fundamentalists" don't recognize that - especially considering God IS perfect, wise, & knows what's he's doing (when we as puny mortals really don't 90% of the time)... apk
The difference between the "humans" and the "elephants" answers shows that 50% of the "creationists" are just parroting the church's views when talking about humans but when they put their mind in gear, as in the "elephant" question, that actually believe in evolution.
Just cold hard science.
I'm not so sure we could have science without politics. For sure, we cannot have science without religion.
Religion does not inhibit logical or deductive thinking. Rather, one inspires another. They band together, unless one falls prey of self-injury. For example, Darwin was renown for his theological merits before becoming famous for reinterpreting the design of Nature.
On the other hand, if we committed scientific research to a team of robots whose minds are so weak that they cannot conceive any moral or religious thought, most probably their outcome would be of no relevance whatsoever. They'd come out with a bunch of meaningless "laws" that nobody could believe or use.
Time to change your sig (actually was time over a week ago).
... and they come across a neon sign that says, "Eat. At. Joes --->"
The preacher says, "Huh. Look, at that. It's a sign!" ... very interesting."
The scientist says, "Yes. It has glass, rubber, steel, paint, neon gas I presume
"Wait, what? My scientist friend, it's a sign."
"Well, we don't know that for sure, do we?"
"Of course it's a sign! It says, 'eat at Joes'."
"Well, who is this 'Joe'? Has anyone ever seen him? How do we know he exists?"
"...."
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
See subject: Too bad it already played out in Johnny Depp's film "TRANSCENDANCE" w/ him alluding to the very point you're now regurgitating by rote, lol...
ALL THAT ASIDE THOUGH?
I can't help, personally, feeling there MUST be an almighty creative force - look @ the universe around us & the rules it's governed by as an example thereof... & that we as men TRY to even COMPREHEND that's almighty forces' plans & thoughts is arrogant (on my part too actually).
APK
P.S.=> You do have a point - Men create "GODS" to CONTROL OTHER MEN ala the "10 commandments" in for example "thou shalt not kill" YET THE POWERS THAT BE that tell us "You be a GOOD little stupid stooge & follow these rules while WE BREAK THEM BY THE MINUTE, ok?" - however, I can't help but feel those rules are right for EVERYONE albeit only IF everyone follows them & they don't... heck, come right down to it? Barney the Dinosaur is correct but the WORLD won't let him be... human nature's dark side won't more than anything else imo... apk
Among epistemologists the near-consensus is that belief is one of the necessary ingredients of knowledge.
Cite? I know lots of things I don't believe in. For example, I have quite a lot of knowledge about how magic works in various fictional systems. I find it much more likely that you're mischaracterizing the belief/knowledge of epistemologists than that they're really that stupid.
See subject: What I call our "racial memory" (writing) evidences it pretty cleanly for example. I think all living beings have 'souls' (ghosts in the machine) actually... & that animals (let's use ones folks are familiar with) like Cats or Dogs are QUITE intelligent... live around them for awhile if you haven't - they can amaze & to quote Gary Oldman from the film "DRACULA"?
* "There is much to be learned from beasts..."
APK
P.S.=> I don't claim to know everything man - I just operate on what I observe is all... I've never "met God", but again - I can't HELP but feel some "almighty creative force" created this construct for us to live & grow in... going to be arrogant here & make a bold statement as to WHY: We're his creations/children. Yes, he loves us. That said, why do you send your children to school? Or if you don't have kids, why'd your parents send you to school for?? To improve you as a person to survive... God sends us here to "visit" imo, for the same basic reasons - to improve our 'souls' in "The UNIVERSITY OF LIFE", so we can better serve him (even if only eventually, when you eventually 'graduate' since I don't feel we "go to heaven" @ least not right away, & this life CAN BE HELL (& heaven too) itself... we keep doing it till hopefully, FINALLY, he gives us "wings"... but it's no guarantee!)... apk
What real good comes of these periodic surveys? What actions are taken as a result? What policies change because of this?
None, none, none.
Seems to me that it is merely an opportunity for a bunch of academics and Narcissistic Pedants to go around clucking about how some people are Stuuupid and don't believe evolution.
Does it really affect you? How about Anti_vaxxers? People who as a whole, are left leaning hippies. Yet, we don't see the wholesale derision of the Hippies for holding anti-vaccine beliefs.
How about Stoners? They (and most of Slashdot) will defend smoking weed all day long and deny that it's harmful. Yet It's known to makes you stupid.
Give it a rest. No one really cares if people believe in evolution of not. If you want to seem really smart, as them about Gravity Waves and then cluck about how smart you are when they can't explain them.
"Well, who is this 'Joe'? Has anyone ever seen him? How do we know he exists?"
We can test it. Follow the sign for a bit, and see if there's a Joe making food.
Right. You either accept evidence and rational thought as your foundation for how the universe really operates, or you are fundamentally in an inconsistent position.
If you decide that evolution 'just doesn't make sense to you', and is therefore false, then you should probably say the same about quantum mechanics... and by extension, you should not believe in the operation of a transistor, and by extension not believe in your own cell phone
Hypocrisy of this kind is very common, largely because people don't connect the dots.. but the dots are connected. To do otherwise is to be like a person who uses Galileo and Newton's theories about motion to predict where a cannonball will land, but denies heliocentrism.
All this shows is that a sizeable fraction of Americans know basic scientific facts, but choose to deny them because it conflicts with stories they have been indoctrinated with. That is actually much more worrying than if they had simply not been informed.
It is easy to imagine the world as something mechanical, governed by mathematical laws. But me... I must be special, I have a consciousness, and free will, I can't be described by the same laws.
Because fellow humans seem to behave like me, and because I was born from humans, it is natural to think that they also have a consciousness, free will, etc... So they are probably special too. Elephants, nah... not special, evolution is OK for them.
At least we made progress : only white males used to be special (for white males).
You may poo poo religion, but you overlook the essential role it played in aiding the ability of humans to expand communities beyond a local tribe of less than 50 individuals.
I would suggest that even today, among normal people, the belief in an all knowing supreme being and the concept of Hell helps to maintain order in society because it provides a re-enforcement of the concept of Good and Evil.
You don't have to believe. But to ridicule people who do is pointless, a waste of time and just a bit of a jackass thing to do.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I am a rocket scientist, you insensitive clod!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You see the same thing in arguments about global warming. People deny the science behind the modern surface temperature record, but support the science behind lower quality satellite records, or old proxy records, as long as it fits their desired outcome.
This is a textbook example of doublethink. Nobody actually believes that elephants have evolved over millions of years, but Adam was just put there. So apparently a quarter of people have an inconsistent belief system, or just two conflicting ones - let's say one from school and one from church - without realizing it. I'm sure if they were confronted with this, they would make some sort of excuses or explanations.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
That is why religious people sponsored surveys make it sound as reactionary and iconoclastic as possible. The religious fundies know that if an escape route is offered that will let the survey respondents find a way to agree with science without very strong contradiction to their faith, they will take that option.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people".
Karl Marx
There's nothing political about it. Just cold hard science. And the same applies to global warming.
Both are quite political: they are shibboleths. (Look that up, it's a Bible reference). They are tribal identifiers.
Someone who understands evolution as well as most people might still answer "no" if asked about humans, because he's a member of the "God-fearing people" tribe. Facts are irrelevant. It like asking about what team they support in the big game.
Someone with no scientific understanding of evolution at all might answer "yes" if asked about humans, because he's a member of the "I love science sexually" tribe. Similarly, he'll tell you that anyone who doesn't accept that Mother Gaea punishes the Sin of Carbon Emission is a "denier", because that's another tribal identifier. He can't tell you how a greenhouse works, but he for damn sure knows the right answer to those questions for a member of his tribe.
That's why it's nearly impossible to have a rational discussion about either topic. Fortunately, for evolution there is the talk.origins FAQ, where all the arguments against evolution are taken seriously and debunked carefully without calling anyone an idiot. For global warming there's no such resource - mostly because no one is actually interested in the topic, other than as a tribal identifier.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No, you fool! It could be one of Joe's employees making the food. Therefore God exists and evolution is false!
That is all.
in science.
Among epistemologists the near-consensus is that belief is one of the necessary ingredients of knowledge.
Cite? I know lots of things I don't believe in. For example, I have quite a lot of knowledge about how magic works in various fictional systems. I find it much more likely that you're mischaracterizing the belief/knowledge of epistemologists than that they're really that stupid.
I feel the same way you do, but:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entr...
"There are three components to the traditional (“tripartite”) analysis of knowledge. According to this analysis, justified, true belief is necessary and sufficient for knowledge.
The Tripartite Analysis of Knowledge:
S knows that p iff
p is true;
S believes that p;
S is justified in believing that p.
The tripartite analysis of knowledge is often abbreviated as the “JTB” analysis, for “justified true belief”."
certainly reinforces at least a classical view that epidemiology claims belief is necessary for knowledge (with the proviso that there are modern theories of knowledge that disagree.)
The kicker seems to be in the use of the word 'justified', which I think I'd characterize as a weasel word on Wikipedia.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Would you ever say that you know God created the Earth in six days if you didn't believe it? No, knowledge of a proposition entails belief of the proposition.
Still, I think you're on the right track. Maybe we should be thinking of science literacy instead of scientific knowledge. Like an atheist can have Bible literacy, a science denier can nonetheless be scientifically literate, which means something like "aware of the latest results of science". But being aware that scientists think the universe is 13.8 billion years old is not the same as knowing that the universe is that old. To have the latter, you have to also agree with the scientists.
I'm a defender of evolution and a strong supporter of science education, and I think this survey question is bullshit because whether you believe humans, or elephants, evolved from different animals tells you NOTHING about how evolution works.
"Knowledge of evolution?" Give me a break. Ask them about natural selection, fitness landscapes, mutation, genetic drift, or molecular clocks. If someone tells you they believe elephants evolved from species xyz, ask them WHY they believe that. If the answer is "someone taught me they did," it's worthless "knowledge."
If you're really interested in the evolution of elephants then do some research into the paleontological record. Learn something, don't just parrot what you hear.
It almost certainly does. It also speeds other scientific research that would have been ignored or would have gotten less attention if not for religion.
Religious people are wary of doing research into bigger and bigger bombs, more powerful rifles, more deadly ammo, etc. They'll work on autonomous cars, but are horrified by autonomous war drones. They're far more likely than non-religious people to try to come up with solutions for world hunger, technology to create clean drinking water for impoverished people (which will eventually be crucial for our planet's survival), cures for diseases that mainly affect people in poor countries, etc.
The real question should not be whether religion affects what research gets done, but rather whether those biases have a net positive or negative impact on the future of the human race. Personally, I think that religion and ethics have a net positive impact on science, though I will acknowledge that occasionally it has negative side effects, either intentionally or accidentally.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If you said: "I know that clerics heal people through channeling divine power" you'd be a freak. If you said: "I know that in the D&D fiction, clerics heal people through channeling divine power" that's not freaky, but it's also a very different proposition. One difference is that you believe the latter, and not the former.
Technically, it'd be one survey with a test and control group. You as the test group about elephants, and the control group about humans.
The results do not surprise me. A lot of people, religious or not, hold to a 'humanity is special' paradigm. Hell, they think they themselves are special. For example, do a survey as to whether people figure they're better or worse than the median/average driver. Most will answer that they're better.
There's a lot of people who will insist that "I ain't evolved from no monkey!" (poor English deliberate)
I don't read AC A human right
suggests that disbelief does not entail lack of knowledge. Can that be?
Umm, obviously so. If, out of context, you ask the question, "Did Noah put all the animals on an ark before a great flood?" The answer can be yes, even if you don't believe that to be true. You can "know" it, you can answer the question truthfully, and yet not believe it to be true. Or, rather in a case like this, a non-believer is probably answering it in the same way that you might answer a question like "Did Romeo love Juliet?" Yes, he did, but he was a fictional character. "Truth" in this case isn't about literal truth, but rather an understanding of background information.
What this study seems to show is that people may "know" about the theory of evolution and even may believe it can happen (for elephants, perhaps), but they don't believe humans evolved from animals. Some people may think this is inconsistent, but it's just a different threshold of understanding/belief. Sort of like how one may believe slavery to be wrong but still be a racist. (This was true, for example, of many people in the Northern U.S. in the 19th century.)
Among epistemologists the near-consensus is that belief is one of the necessary ingredients of knowledge.
Huh? First off, as mentioned above, it's clear that someone can UNDERSTAND something (e.g., an argument, a work of fiction, etc.) without believing it to be literally true. One can thus answer a question without necessarily believing it to be true. I imagine some of the responses to the elephant question are like that: they don't necessarily recognize or perhaps don't even care about whether the question is concerning or conflicting with religious dogma.
Second, it's possible for people to see these things as two separate cases. The wacko creationists often talk about "microevolution" vs. "macroevolution" and such, and I could certainly see such religious people believing that animal species can change over time. Unless you're one of the "cave men used to hang out with dinosaurs" type of wacko, you probably recognize animal types change over time. And I also am familiar with religious people who believe that evolution of the universe more-or-less happened according to science today, but humans were still a "special creation" of sorts. You may not view these theories as valid, but people do believe them.
Third, people may also be confused by the question. They may not really understand "species" correctly and not recognize the evolution (as we understand it) occurs if one species changes into another. They may have interpreted the question more like dog breeding or something. (Arguably, that could be seen as an example of evolution under selective pressure too, but it's probably not the kind of thing the scientists asking the question in TFA were after.)
The treatment used with an explanation of humans vs. other animals here treats humans as some sort of exception or special case. I posit that we have not made it far past our ancestors, and that the defining difference we call civilization is not unique to us when examined further. We are merely very intelligent animals, and we came from animals that had to be intelligent to survive because their teeth, claws and hide were not strong enough to achieve dominance in a straightforward manner. At some level we all seem to accept this fact, however, as demonstrated by the fear shown in the presence of a wild animal demonstrating their intelligence when not caged.
I wouldn't read too much into the "no film zone". All Harvard classes that are recorded have that clause, and have had it for at least 10 years. Maybe longer, but I can't remember that far back.
}#q NO CARRIER
suggests that disbelief does not entail lack of knowledge. Can that be?
It's pretty easy to see how it works in this case:
Elephants evolved, but humans didn't because humans are special.
These people don't seem to disbelieve evolution, they largely seem to disbelieve that humans evolved.
I think this is just a case of specialists (epistemologists) defining a technical term (knowledge) in a way that is narrower and more precise than in general usage. And for some unknown reason "Dr. Spork" chooses to assume that an article written from outside the specialist field is using the specialist definition.
The Percentage of believers in evolution appears to have gone down in the years after the Scopes "Monkey" trial. Even in high school biology many kids are afraid of crossing the line of their personal belief. ,"Greater good" and "You're too stupid to understand the difference" have driven a huge gulf in the mainstream zeitgeist. It's of particular interest to watch each generation believe themselves to be elevated above the mistakes of previous generations. How is a crusade any different from 30, 60 90 or 1000 years ago? What do you do with people who refuse to cooperate?
There is an animosity among those follow the path of moral superiority. A belief that their existence must be elevated by putting others down. The caustic attitudes of "moral Superiority"
People will learn about what they are passionate about. Do what you like to do! There are some who like to fight, and some who don't. Some like to cause pain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOtMizMQ6oM - Be a Dentist!
Most of science is so full of jargon its amazing that an everyman gets it all. Teach concepts then vocabulary.
The moral is to be nice to other people, have empathy for them and their beliefs. They are people and deserve dignity. It must be understood that
And yet, in both I have knowledge.
>Religious people are wary of doing research into bigger and bigger bombs, more powerful rifles...
[Citation Needed]
Don't bother, you won't find a fact-based statement for this.
You're entire post is a thinly veiled "without religion, we won't have right or wrong" argument, and is bunk. You're argument is bad and you should *feel* bad.
Ah, the classic butt hurt denialst, bitter from years of defending his anti science world view.
Would you ever say that you know God created the Earth in six days if you didn't believe it? No, knowledge of a proposition entails belief of the proposition.
The knowledge of that proposition is not the same as believing it. I know of the proposition that it is "turtles all the way down", and I know of the proposition of the geocentric universe, but neither require that I believe them to know them.
You have it exactly backwards. You cannot believe a proposition unless you know of it, but you can know of it without believing it.
But being aware that scientists think the universe is 13.8 billion years old is not the same as knowing that the universe is that old.
You're right. You do not know that it is that old. You know that, assuming certain things, a value of 13.8 billion years is consistent with current observations. You know of the proposition, but you do not need to believe it to know of it.
That's the same thing with evolution. You can know about the physical processes involved in genetics. You can know about fossil evidence. And yet, you do not need to believe that either one (or both combined) are the cause of the existence of certain animals on this planet.
Without observing the event, you cannot truly know how it happened. You can have a complete knowledge of the processes that were alleged to have occurred to achieve the result, but that doesn't mean you must believe that that's how it happened.
To have the latter, you have to also agree with the scientists.
You have to do more than that. You have to ignore the fact that they don't know, either. They believe. It is unfortunate the lay use of the term has been adapted by scientists who want to project a level of certainty about their work. It causes confusion just like what this study finds.
Did God create the Earth in six days? There are no observations that can back up an answer either way. You can say "this observation today is consistent with a process that spanned billions of years." But then, a forged painting also produces observations that are "consistent with a painting produced by Van Gogh", and yet it was not.
I don't believe humans came from some lower life form, nor did elephants, and I would probably do quite well on your science quiz.
I'm not sure if you're being pedantic or an idiot. It's clear that GP meant Evolution of life and not the concept of the word applied to anything.
population to be stupid he wouldn't have designed Americans in the first place.
It is obvious to anyone that elephants evolved form wooly mammoths
It might be obvious, but it's wrong. They both have a common ancestor, one did not evolve from the other. The same thing goes for humans and other extant apes.
I honestly thought that was GPs point. People "know" a thing, but for the wrong reasons.
You know, I would really like to believe this. However, many religious people just use religion to justify their bigotry and small-mindedness. See also: the entire Christian Right.
That's a bunch of nonsense, cleverly having a Schrodiger's the implicit assumption "according to Genesis". Everyone understands that you can have knowledge of Shakespeare without literally believing it to be true in the real world. But your claims about "Did Romeo love Juliet" are all clearly implicitly conditioned on being with respect to the play.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
1. Design nanoscale materials.
2. Detect gravitational waves.
3. Successfully perform brain surgery.
4. Sucessfully launch a spacecraft.
1. You might need to use an engineered bacteria to create the material. 2. You might need to use evolutionary algorithm to optimize the structure of the detector. 3. You need to use medical products during, before and after the surgery. 4. Lets just lazily say the same as 2. and 1.
n/t
Is evil.
I think it's just philosophically sloppy language they're using there. You're correct that if they don't believe humans evolved from other animals, they don't know that either.
The two scenarios I think they mean to distinguish between are:
-- People think humans didn't evolve because they never learned anything about the theory of evolution at all; they are wholly ignorant of it; and
-- People think humans didn't evolve because, despite knowing about evolution in general, they specifically disbelieve that it applies to human.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
You can know that others believe something without believing it, but you cannot know the thing that they believe unless you also believe it.
I don't know that the world was created in six days. I know that the Bible says that the world was created in six days.
One is about the world. One is about what a book says about the world.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
You've just projected that YOU do along with heroin so I'd quit that junk if I were you... ok? Good.
APK
P.S.=> Puny troll, lol... apk
What I wrote in my 'p.s.' here to DarinBob actually http://science.slashdot.org/co...
APK
P.S.=> I'm with you there actually IF you read that & it goes along w/ what DarinBob wrote that pretty much was what Johnny Depp said in the film "TRANSCENDANCE" - which is WHY I'm not "big" on ORGANIZED RELIGION (created by groups of men) - it gets abused for control, selling others "hope" (or INDULGENCES if you know what those were about) & with no real guarantees except that you can guarantee they want your money - HOWEVER - I do truly believe there is a God (& yes Jesus too)... apk
See subject: The poor fool has DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR @ being a professional certified shrink - so pity him & thanks for bearing with his stupidity.
APK
P.S.=> I never learned to be just plain WRONG (& all the time) like you troll, that's YOUR PROBLEM, not mine... apk
Poe's Law? A well-constructed troll? Maybe not, considering some of the genuine creationist posts I've seen here, so:
So a male of a species develops a new sexual trait. A female just pops up in the same generation that's compatible with that trait when by definition one mutation would have to occur in the Y chromosome while the other occurs outside of it.
Unfortunately, you don't understand genetics very well, at least not beyond the elementary school level, and certainly not well enough to debate the role of genetic changes in evolution. Just to illustrate how far off you are, irrespective of evolution, look up "ring species". I'll let you find the information rather than providing a link, so you'll have no reason to assume I'm intentionally providing something scientifically biased. Hopefully, you have the ability to discern the scientific validity of whatever sources on "ring species" you find - it's not directly related to evolution and not a controversial topic. Understanding that might be an inspiration for actually learning enough to eventually see just how wrong your post is, and I would hope that you will continue learning more.
- T
You can know that others believe something without believing it, but you cannot know the thing that they believe unless you also believe it.
Yes, I certainly can. I gave several examples of this already. I know what strict creationists believe, but I do not have to believe it to know it.
One is about the world. One is about what a book says about the world.
Just as knowing that evolution as a mechanism for change in organisms over time exists is knowing about the world, and knowing that humans evolved from lesser life forms is knowing what scientists say about the world. Any discussion that talks about people "knowing" that evolution is how humans came to be is a discussion about what someone says about the world, not the world itself. Therefore, I can know what someone says about the world but not believe it. That knowledge does not require a belief.
If someone tells you they believe elephants evolved from species xyz, ask them WHY they believe that. If the answer is "someone taught me they did," it's worthless "knowledge."
I cannot entirely agree with this. If you asked people why they believe 8 - 3 = 5 or 2 + 4 = 6, I suspect you'd be disappointed with how many could articulate a valid basis for those "beliefs" beyond having memorized addition and subtraction pairs in 1st grade. At best, you might find some who can illustrate those operations using fingers or toothpicks. You are very unlikely to find anyone who even mentions "axiom of choice". That doesn't make it worthless knowledge - most such individuals are at least capable of balancing a checkbook.
I'm not asserting that the general public is sufficiently well-versed in basic science. However, "less wrong" and "less incomplete" knowledge is not "worthless" knowledge. Many people won't (and some can't) ever get beyond rote memorization of science, math, and many other fields of study. That's still far better than "God did it".
- T
You're saying that Isaac Newton's religious beliefs put an artificial cap on his scientific accomplishments? I'd say if this century sees even one scientist of Isaac Newton's stature, we'll be doing well. It doesn't matter if he's religious or not.
We have every reason to think that people pursue science out of a fascination for nature because they believe God created it, just as much as we might think people steer clear of certain avenues of inquiry because of those same beliefs. The great thing about modern society is that we get the benefit of these peoples' inquiries while ALSO reaping the results of the investigations of atheists. As long as they don't descend into throwing sticks and stones at each other, each is free to pursue research as they see fit. This is not a bad thing, it's a good thing.
That's why it's nearly impossible to have a rational discussion about either topic. Fortunately, for evolution there is the talk.origins FAQ, where all the arguments against evolution are taken seriously and debunked carefully without calling anyone an idiot. For global warming there's no such resource - mostly because no one is actually interested in the topic, other than as a tribal identifier.
I'd have to say that the arguments page from Skeptical Science does a pretty good job of debunking arguments against anthropogenic global warming.
Instead of saying "evolution doesn't make sense", how about if I say "evolution makes perfect sense and I see why an atheist needs to believe in it, I just don't think the evidence we have establishes that the species we see in the fossil record evolved solely through random chance"? I can understand the observable science without believing everything the evolutionists say about what happened in the distant past.
My knowledge of information science tells me that if there was no creator involved in life on earth, then space aliens is a more likely explanation than pure random chance.
The thing about those other branches of science you mentioned (transistors, quantum mechanics, cell phone technologies, gravity) is that they involve testable, repeatable laws. You induce the oscillation here, the signal is detectable there. Every time. This is not the case with the origin of life on earth. It is neither observable nor repeatable.
It's a start. That's not that great - it sounds dismissive of the questioner "what science says! Don't you love science sexually? Are you a bad person from the wrong tribe?"
It's also doesn't address the more informed concerns at all, but that's OK, addressing the silly concerns is a good start. (The "It's the Sun" answer completely ignores the biggest question in the debate, IMO.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
We can test it. Follow the sign for a bit, and see if there's a Joe making food.
The question of whether or not it is a "sign" (in either sense) does not depend on the existence of Joe, or who is making the food.
In the pedantic sense, both people know it is a sign because it has all the properties of the object called "sign", as found in the dictionary. If the scientist is saying that he doesn't know if it is a sign or not tells us he is either not a native English speaker or is ignorant.
Whether it is a "sign" or not depends on whether there was a pre-existing concern such as "we need food soon, where should we go to eat", that this sign could be a metaphysical answer to.
Stephen Colbert had his audience go "fix" Wikipedia's article on elephants a few years ago. Since then, everything about them on the internetz has become totally truthy, er, fake. We all know they evolved from cats.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I've always found it disturbing that people somehow don't equate being human as an animal.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Sure, we've known that dogs are related to other canines for a long time, but it's only fairly recent that we've had enough genetic data to be sure that they're descended from wolves, as opposed to other theories about jackals, foxes, coyotes, multiple species of wolves, etc., especially since there's a lot of potential for hybridization (e.g. the recent coywolves in the US, which descended from hybrids of coyote, wolf, and domestic dog) and domestication may have happened in multiple places at multiple times.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
40 years? You're trying to blame your parents, or your high school teachers, or what?
First of all, we've had a reasonable amount of wide evolutionary belief since the 1870s, Mendel's work was rediscovered around 1900, the Scopes Monkey Trial was in 1925 (because evolution was sufficiently widely known to be a threat to some people's social position), DNA in the 1950s.
The real problem has been how badly many people were taught about it. Not only was there the whole Social Darwinism thing and the Eugenics movement, using misunderstood and misrepresented "evolutionary" ideas to justify discriminating against and mistreating other people, there was the positively-intended fluffy belief that evolution was somehow about "progress", and evolving meant we were "improving" every day, or every generation, or certainly "scientifically" better than previous species.
How often do you hear people today talk about humans evolving into even more advanced species, or talking about how people they disapprove of needing to evolve? That's why people like Sarah Palin can ask "Why are there still monkeys?" That usual picture of the monkey evolving into the ape, then the Neanderthal, then the Cro-Magnon, then modern humans, each one standing taller and moving ever forward? It should be a picture of a whole bunch of monkeys and apes and hominids running around in various directions from each other.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Hmm... science itself just is. That other stuff you mention just applies to people who are not very literate scientifically. Of course that applies to a majority of people.
I'm curious, what is it you think is the big question in the "It's the Sun" debate that they're ignoring?
The Sun is by far the dominate factor in temps here on Earth. And it's not stable (and none of the climate guys are modeling it, not their field). So, whither solar radiance? absent Mankind - are we facing a huge drop in temps, or a huge spike? If you look at the ice core data, we've been in a historical anomaly for the past 10k years, and we'd normally have returned to glaciers covering Europe by now. The 100k year glaciation cycles are thought to be solar cycles, but no one knows why the cycle was broken. Over we overdue for a sharp return to the norm? Or is the current ice age ending, and we're due for a warm Earth (no ice at the poles, or anywhere year-round)? It's the biggest question: is the warming effect of man's CO2 a bad thing, or a good thing, or a rounding error?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Your absurd lack of understanding about biology - and the fact that you obviously haven't put much effort into trying to understand it - is a fine example of the very point you are attempting to argue against. Thank you for demonstrating so clearly the danger of thinking you have the answer, rather than actually studying the topic in question and continuing to research it until your theory lets you make predictions consistent with future findings.
A small sampling of the ways in which you are completely wrong:
1) Mutations can be passed down from either parent; it is not necessary that the other parent have some "compatible" mutation.
2) Mutations do not need to be related to the sex chromosomes in order to be passed along, they merely need to be present in the DNA of the gametes.
3) Speciation (that is, one or more mutations which make a creature reproductively incompatible with its population of origin) does not need to occur in one generation; it's entirely possible for an intermediate species to be compatible with two species that are not compatible with each other, and that intermediate species often die out some time after breeding populations of the divergent (and better-adapted) species have become established.
For somebody who doesn't appear to even understand the most basic concepts of Mandelian inheritance, you sure seem to *think* you know a lot about evolution, though. Perhaps your science teachers and/or classroom materials were selected more for ideological compliance than for accurate scientific knowledge?
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
You don't seem to be understanding the natural language explanation of your confusion, so let me write it in pseudocode:
You can know believes(x,P) without believing P.
But you can't know P without believing P.
Creationists can know believes(scientists,"Humans evolved") without believing "Humans evolved".
But they can't know "Humans evolved" without believing "Humans evolved".
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
And thought the question was about Republicans.
Just in case of thin skins - the comment at the bottom was a general statement describing the hate preachers of Christianity-Lite and not aimed at the above poster.
Disagree if you wish but it's an opinion so debating it as if a fact is pointless.
75% believe humans have evolved from elephants?
No, I mean it's literally worthless knowledge - in that you may be able to parrot back a few facts, but they will not help you solve any real problems.
A good example is the experience Richard Feynman had when reviewing textbooks:
I thought, "I know what it is: They're going to talk about mechanics, how the springs work inside the toy; about chemistry, how the engine of the automobile works; and biology, about how the muscles work."
It was the kind of thing my father would have talked about:
"What makes it go? Everything goes because the sun is shining." And then we would have fun discussing it:
"No, the toy goes because the spring is wound up," I would say.
"How did the spring get wound up?" he would ask.
"I wound it up."
"And how did you get moving?"
"From eating."
"And food grows only because the sun is shining. So it's because the sun is shining that all these things are moving." That would get the concept across that motion is simply the transformation of the sun's power.
I turned the page. The answer was, for the wind-up toy, "Energy makes it go." And for the boy on the bicycle, "Energy makes it go." For everything, "Energy makes it go."
Now that doesn't mean anything. Suppose it's "Wakalixes." That's the general principle: "Wakalixes makes it go." There's no knowledge coming in. The child doesn't learn anything; it's just a word!
What they should have done is to look at the wind-up toy, see that there are springs inside, learn about springs, learn about wheels, and never mind "energy." Later on, when the children know something about how the toy actually works, they can discuss the more general principles of energy.
It's also not even true that "energy makes it go," because if it stops, you could say, "energy makes it stop" just as well, What they're talking about is concentrated energy being transformed into more dilute forms, which is a very subtle aspect of energy. Energy is neither increased nor decreased in these examples; it's just changed from one form to another. And when the things stop, the energy is changed into heat, into general chaos.
But that's the way all the books were: They said things that were useless, mixed-up, ambiguous, confusing, and partially incorrect. How anybody can learn science from these books, I don't know, because it's not science.
The Sun is by far the dominate factor in temps here on Earth.
Absolutely true, compared to the Sun other sources such as internal heat from the Earth and heat from combustion (human & natural) are mere rounding errors. But the next most dominant factor in the temperature of the Earth is the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Without them the average temperature on the surface would be around 0 degrees F rather than around the 58F that it is.
And it's not stable (and none of the climate guys are modeling it, not their field). So, whither solar radiance?
What about solar radiance? I would say the Sun is quite stable. It has the 11/22 year cycle that causes less than 1% variation in average TSI which is between 1365.5 and 1366.5 W/m^2 at the top of the atmosphere. Even in the current "lowest since 1750 when accurate records start" cycle 24 TSI has remained well above 1365 W/m^2. Climate scientists are not ignoring solar radiance, they just realize the variation is small enough and regular enough they can mostly treat it as a constant for the sake of climate modeling. They may have to do some tweaking if the solar cycles remain low for a while but it won't make a big change to their results.
absent Mankind - are we facing a huge drop in temps, or a huge spike? If you look at the ice core data, we've been in a historical anomaly for the past 10k years, and we'd normally have returned to glaciers covering Europe by now. The 100k year glaciation cycles are thought to be solar cycles, but no one knows why the cycle was broken. Over we overdue for a sharp return to the norm? Or is the current ice age ending, and we're due for a warm Earth (no ice at the poles, or anywhere year-round)? It's the biggest question: is the warming effect of man's CO2 a bad thing, or a good thing, or a rounding error?
The interglacial period of around 425,000 years ago appears to have been longer than normal so I'm not sure I'd say we're overdue for a new glacial period yet. The cycle of glaciations appears to be largely driven by variations in orbital and rotational parameters of Earth collectively known as Milankovitch Cycles. They cause more variation in TSI at Earth's orbit than internal solar variations and they also cause changes in the distribution of TSI on the Earth. The current interglacial reached a peak temperature during the Holocene Climatic Optimum around 6,000-8,000 years ago and has been slowly cooling ever since. That is until recently when the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has caused a sharp spike in temperature. Climate scientists have calculated it's impossible for a new glacial cycle to start as long as CO2 remains above 240-250 ppm. The slow cooling of the Holocene would have eventually caused CO2 to drop as the oceans cooled and other factors absorbed CO2 but we've interrupted that cycle.
Whether it's a good or bad thing for Earth doesn't matter. It's the effects on our global civilization that matter to us. A little warming was probably warranted to halt the slow slide to the next glaciation but we've overshot what is necessary for that. Will our current civilization be resilient enough to withstand the changes that are coming? I guess we'll find out.
An interesting article. I think the problem is that, in the US, "evolution" has been used by haters as a stick with which to attack Christians, rather than treated as a religiously-neutral piece of scientific work. There's been so much "SCIENCE PROVES YOUR RELIGION IS WRONG" crap. Things like creationism are a natural response to this kind of unscientific bullying. When you read many of the comments shrieking at the Christians, you realise that the motivation here is not interest in evolution but simple hate. Those doing the shrieking, more often than not, seem to have no scientific background. Naturally this has produced a reaction.
It does not serve science well to become the tool of an aggressive political group, or of a miltant and dogmatic religious group (which is what atheists are, for all practical purposes). It does not serve the community well when those who have power abuse science to demonise those whom they hate for quite other reasons.
Let's have less of "evolutionism", less of 14-year old atheists claiming to speak for science, less philosophy pretending to be science, and rather better science and better ethics in how it is taught.
Since ancient times there have only been three explanations of why the world exists - that it always existed; that someone made it; or that it made itself. Let us acknowledge that whenever people say that evolution is put into such a pigeonhole, it stops being science and becomes religion; and let us acknowledge that evolution as science is not one of those three explanations. And let's do away with all the religious wars on the subject.
is that the people who DEMAND that they are just highly-evolved animals refuse to live their lives as though they truly believe themselves and everybody else to just be animals. Go forth! Rape and murder! Do whatever you must to have as many offspring as possible, then die and get out of the way! Instead, nearly every single human who claims to believe in evolution actually lives his/her life as though there is a spiritual side to things and often even as though there is a fixed set of standards for "right" and "wrong" that come from somewhere more authoritative than the a majority vote by a bunch of gazelles. They rant about evolution, and then get concerned when a parent or grandparent gets sick or dies, or they vote for politicians who push severely anti-evolutionary "welfare" programs.
Just what does it even MEAN to be "evolved"? It's anthropomorphic presumption to assume human traits are "better" - ask a Lion or a Falcon or a cockroach.
Why is this such a problem? Why do you all care what other people know or believe? You don't own their brains. You can't turn them into the person you want them to be. Get on with your own lives, and if you truly care about educating people, then get off your ass and do it, instead of bitching and whining that the world isn't what you'd like it to be.
Just so you "know", Pfhorrest definition of "knowing" is "willing to believe against all evidence".
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
I wish there were two distinct terms for the two kinds of faith.
Science wants to convince you by presenting ever better evidence for ever better hypotheses and theories, until you decide you can rely on them.
Religion wants you to stay convinced despite the absence of evidence or even when presented with counter-evidence ("having your faith tested").
I know I'm not hitting the nail squarely on the head here, but to me these are two quite different kinds of faith.
This would be more accurate if the sign said "Eat at Joes: Best Food in the World!"
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
"Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." I've got to say - I don't agree with that statement either. I know several human beings today, and all of them have been human from birth; none of them developed from earlier species of animals.
Now, if the statement were "The human species developed from earlier species of animals," I would agree with that.
It my seem like semantic nitpicking, but there's a common misunderstanding that evolution means individual bacteria turn into birds or individual dogs turn into monkeys. I prefer not to feed that misconception.
"You would be more correct by saying "Men with mustaches pretty much hold the record for murdering the most people."
That would make you "un bigote" (Spanish word for mustache)!
Firstly, as a random person in front of a computer, you are unlikely to have verified much, if any, of the scientific knowledge you take for granted.
So you exercise some level of belief already, simply because it is physically impossible for you to personally verify every single aspect of every single science personally.
Yes there is some degree of danger of falling into the Argument from Authority fallacy. But remember, fallacies are warnings, not factual statements of being (ie, the presence of a fallacy doesn't mean the statement is automatically false, only that it could be false, and you should examine the statement being made closely).
But even so, this belief is rational. It's based on the confidence that you could if you chose choose any one experiment and replicate it, given enough funding/time/resources. It's a rational belief based on prior work and prior verifications, and is the reason the danger of an authority fallacy is increasingly negligible for many areas of well established science (this includes global warming by the way).
Now religion on the other hand, true religion, is totally unverifiable.
You believe something because a guy in a funny robe told you to.
Or because a book told you to.
Once again, the spectre of the Authority fallacy rears its head.
and this time you cannot dispel it by performing any verification yourself.
You cannot pierce the veil of death verify that there is a heaven or hell on the other side n the same way we can verify and demonstrate evolution.
You cannot prove that a bush talked to Moses in the same way we can compile thousands of data points over a tremendous time period and show the warming of the planet.
Religious statements are staements of faith, and such -cannot- be verified in any way.
That's why it's called Faith.
So while yes, there is a degree of belief involved in science, the word itself really is a limitation of language, "belief" being the best word to use, yet still not quite right. therefore the concepts of science requires a nuanced and intelligent concept of what is being discussed, a concept that goes beyond the mere literal meaning of the words...a literal meaning that folks like you exploit in order to deceive and portray science as just another religion.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
425k years?
Look at the Vostok data, please. Other cores are similar. It's a 100K year glaciation cycle, and temps change quite abruptly around the peaks. The Greenland ice cores show temp changes as aggressive as 15 degrees in 20 years.
Yes, there are orbital factors that affect insolation, but those cycles don't suddenly "pause" the way temps have for the past 10k years, and the longer cycles, such as the ice age we've been in for millions of years, aren't caused by them. It doesn't take much in terms of solar variance to radically affect the climate, and our models of the Sun are worse than our models of our own climate (which, frankly, suck - no one understands the feedback loops that cause the very fast temp changes around the onset of glaciation, there's only guesswork).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You don't seem to be understanding the natural language explanation of your confusion,
No, what YOU are not understanding is that "knowing" in this context cannot be knowing how the event actually occurred, but only knowing what other people claim about how the event occurred.
When you ask someone if they believe that "humans evolved from lesser animals", you are not asking if they know it happened, you are asking if they believe the people who claim that it happened that way. This is being paraded as scientific illiteracy, when the truth is that it is quite possible, indeed likely, that people know about evolution but just do not believe that it is the way things happened. Therefore, they KNOW but do not BELIEVE.
The people who claim it happened that way do not know, they only know that the current observations agree with predictions of what we would see if that were the way it happened. They BELIEVE they KNOW, which is a different concept.
But they can't know "Humans evolved" without believing "Humans evolved".
Since nobody can know, the context of the question about evolution cannot be as you state it here.
Well, in an online forum I participate in, the whole "evolution" thing comes up occasionally. (It's discouraged, because it always results in flame wars, but it still pops up from time to time.)
One participant has a pretty through understanding of evolutionary theory, and he often takes apart bad Creationist arguments in a manner worthy of Richard Dawkins himself. However, this person is also, himself, a Creationist of the 4004 BC variety. He just won't put up with bad arguments for his belief.
Personally, the whole 4004 BC thing gives me hives, but it also seems pretty clear that we don't know everything about how life began.
If you have a personal religious experience that changed your life (and some people do), I'd call that true religion. It has nothing to do with any form of authority. Religion from a preacher or holy book is partly derived from true religion, and partly from a need to separate out a tribe.
Suppose a great religious leader appears, and inspires many people. The people who work with him don't need fancy doctrine or rules. The leader dies. The people who worked with him get old, and most people's contact with said leader is third- or fourth-hand. For this to turn into a religion, there has to be some common core of belief, and that will normally be made up based on what the leader said, more or less.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I thought elephants were invented by Disney...
Whether or not anybody can actually know P at all is completely beside the point that you cannot, strictly speaking, know P without in the process believing P.
Some people are speaking roughly and saying "know P" when they mean "know that x claims that P", while also demonstrating that they don't believe P; that is obvious and nobody is disputing it. What we're all trying to tell you is that that kind of statement is technically incorrect; they in fact do not "know P yet not believe P", they merely know that x claims that P and yet don't believe it.
Whether or not x or anyone else truly knows P is beside the point.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Yes, look at the Vostok data. The indicated temperatures 425K year ago remained above the current temperatures for over 25K years by the scale of the graph. Yes, there was a sharp peak toward the end of that period but that doesn't obviate the fact that the interglacial period was quite long. I'd be surprised if you could get any scientist who studies ice cores to agree that they have a resolution as fine as 20 years and 15 degrees (we are talking Celsius here aren't we?) is greater than the Earth average for the transition from a full glaciation to a full interglacial (the range on the Vostok graph is less than 11C). Now if you meant to write 1.5 degrees, that I can believe.
Milankovitch Cycles don't pause but they vary. MC components include eccentricity (see *), obliquity (cycle length ~41K years), axial precession(~26K), apsidal precession (25,771.5 to ~21,636) and orbital inclination (~100K). The harmony between those different cycle lengths is complex.
* It's interesting that the eccentricity has a rather complex set of variations. From Wikipedia:
The major component of these variations occurs on a period of 413,000 years (eccentricity variation of ±0.012). A number of other terms vary between components 95,000 and 125,000 years (with a beat period 400,000 years), and loosely combine into a 100,000-year cycle (variation of 0.03 to +0.02). The present eccentricity is 0.017 and decreasing.
So with the beat period of 400K years and the major component cycle of 413K years it wouldn't be surprising that effects of eccentricity are similar now to what they were 400K years ago. I take that as corroborating evidence that the extralong interglacial of 425K years ago and the present are related by similar MC conditions.
We've been measuring TSI by satellite continuously from the 1970s. The variation during that time is the range I gave in the previous post. Maybe there have been times in the past when solar radiation changed out of that range (not taking into account the Sun very slowly heating up as it ages) but I've never seen any scientific evidence for that.
Maybe it doesn't take much solar variance to affect the climate but we're in the midst of the lowest solar cycle in over a century (Cycle 24 which started in 2008) yet temperatures continue to rise. How long did you say that delay was?
Religion is poison for the mind, it is arsenic, meth, cocaine and cyanide of the mind, it is the murderer of intelligence, destroyer of sound logic and of critical thought.
Nobody works harder on slashdot to recruit for a religion than you, roman. The fact that you can't see this yourself is evidence of how much your religion has corrupted your ability to see the world objectively. Just because you are recruiting for a religion that follows a living deity rather than a deity who is either dead or only a spiritual entity does not make your crusade any less religious.
Roman isn't trolling, he's karma-whoring. He is arguably one of the most devoutly religious people on slashdot, constantly recruiting for his religion here. His karma has been in the shitter more than once, so he tries to seek out opportunities like this to post things that he expects will be quickly up-modded so that he can restore his karma and start posting more religious propaganda. It matters not at all to him that his karma-whoring posts are actually counter to what he really believes; they are just an ends to a mean.
A invention by another religious group (who shall remain unnamed) to sell more during that time of year instead of giving love + respect to God & Jesus as well as being thankful for a good family.
APK
P.S.=> Satisfied? apk
Well, I didn't choose the best counterexample - arithmetic can be used to balance a checkbook without understanding anything fundamental about math, while memorized facts about evolution cannot be used to solve problems, as you have stated. Fair enough. However, I still maintain that such memorized facts are not worthless, even if they are useless for problem solving. I say they still have some value over both utter ignorance and complete balderdash like "God did it".
- T