An uncanny number of creationist cranks turn out to be engineers by training: insisting that they know biology better than biologists, physics better than physicists, and so on.
I think for most observant Jews, the interpretations of early Christians on looked just as woefully uninformed and ignorant of Scripture as what you're suggesting. That's partly why Christianity failed to catch on amongst literate Jews and ended up finding its audience primarily amongst Gentiles who couldn't even read the Scriptures in their original form.
Saying the OT belongs to "the Jews" over against Christians seems no different than saying it belongs to one modern sect of Judaism over against another.
Given how radical the Christian re-interpretation of Scripture is, and given that it very quickly became primarily a movement of non-Jews, I think it's a pretty fair distinction to make.
Seriously, I'm annoyed with most science journalists more and more everyday.
Most textbooks already discuss the matter of groupings, as well as mentioning that there are several different competing ideas about the best way to categorize things. The article makes it sound like this latest insight means everything is flat out wrong and needs to be discarded, when in fact all it needs is simply its account of the latest progress in the debate updated in the next edition.
You're deeply confused. And I don't get it. I see people misusing and being corrected on their misuse of the word "theory" all the time: you'd think that the number of people misusing it would decrease.
There is no "still" a theory. Evolutionary theory is and always will be called a scientific theory, never a fact. It is made up of and supported by all sorts of scientific facts (including things that one might call Evolutionary fact, such as common descent), in fact, but "theory" is science's term for "body of explanation" not "this is just speculation."
I don't think you can establish that religion "gets it right" or not in the same sense as science. Whether religion "gets it right" mostly seems to involve whether or not people find it compelling: but there isn't any body of evidence against which we can judge, for instance, the truth (or even the intelligibility) of the Trinity. And there's hordes and hordes of evidence that believers, when confronted with disconfirming facts on things that can be tested, will actually strengthen their faith rather than causing them to discard it.
In short: science and mathematics both provide a method for error-checking. Religion doesn't seem to have any such consistent method or even ethic. Literally anything goes when it comes to justifying a belief or asserting that it's true. Many apologists think that's a strength (look, we can explain away any objection!) but it's actually a huge weakness.
It was my understanding that we'd gone from "many think that" to pretty much accepting this model. The terminology and naming conventions are, of course, always a mess, but on the substantive issues, these three big groups seemed pretty much a done deal to me last time I checked.
For all the article's blaring headlines, this actually isn't all that big of a deal in terms of anything previous being wrong or anything substantive overturned. It's basically a small insight that allows us to have more consistent Linnaean naming convention (a system that is already well known to be deeply flawed and clumsy... but hey, it's tradition!). For cladists, it's an interesting bit of extra detail about previously uncertain connections, but changes nothing much at all.
Er, I'm not sure the actual paper says anything about mutations directly, or even could, considering their methodology. What they observed were the traits and their genetic makeup of current species, not those species who may have had mutations that didn't last until the present. What they were looking for seems to be something very different from what the article implies. They wanted to see how selection biased a highly conserved feature was compared to what we normally assume is random drift over time. But even random drift is not the same thing as all random mutations being preserved for observation.
Well, not so fast. Ben Stein, current pimp for ID in his new movie, seems to imply just that in some of his interviews: he talks about cells "intelligently" deciding how to change their DNA. Sounds like something he garbled out of either mainstream science (in which there are all sorts of mechanisms, though not intelligent ones, that change DNA in particular ways) or out of his many talks with ID theorists: so that idea may well now be part of their mix. Bottom line is that these guys will latch on to just about anything as long as it has the words "intelligent" and "evolution is wrong" in there somewhere.
It's consistent with every other poll on the subject. You can talk about different kinds of creationism, but the classic evolution denying kind is clearly no tiny minority: it's a majority. I mean, around 44% of Americans believe that the world is only a matter of 10,000 years old or less, right off the bat. That's not subtlety speaking.
And really, the only types of creationism that are scientifically sensible are the range from theistic evolution to deism, which virtually no one means to include when they talk about "creationism" (they often don't even mean to include ID, which is fiercely opposed to theistic evolution), and is a very small number of people (mostly practicing scientists who are religious and philosophers).
Actually, the article sort of sucks, so don't fault folks for getting the wrong impression from it. The real paper's summary section is a heck of a lot more clear (if drier and less overdramatic) than the article.
Polls say otherwise. A substantial MAJORITY of people in the US are creationists in the sense that they think that evolution is incompatible with the Bible (i.e. the true history)
The article is definately out of whack.
What they were measuring were the developments over time, not the mutations. In fact, there's no way to classify most mutations as beneficial or detrimental unless you actually sit and watch to see if they survive. Furthermore, from the actual paper it looks like this was a study of natural phylogeny, not sitting around watching generation after generation grow.
Yep. The article does look all out of whack, claiming that the findings are a lot more dramatic and generalizable than they were intended to be. In any case, this paper is all about whether biased or unbiased selection of traits dominates, not absolutely proving that one thing or another is the case. The headline is ridiculous and the discussion of the results laughable... which is especially absurd given that the paper itself is much more clear about what they set out to test and what they found.
One more reason that science bloggers are a way way better source of information about specialized work than most science "journalists."
Actually, I'm pretty sure this experiment, while confirming evolution as pretty much every other such study does, wasn't actually about that at all. The article is misrepresenting the debate: it's almost certainly one between strong selectionists and advocates of the neutral theory, which is really more of a technical debate over genetics than anything having to do with confirming or disconfirming Darwin. I tried to parse through these issues here.
No truth to the rumor. By what mechanism could anyone ever be cured of a disease by sleeping with someone who happened not to have had sex before? The rumor led to untold numbers of rapes, unfortunately.
Actually, the article is pretty confusing on this, so I wouldn't jump to conclusions as to what it was actually talking about. It sounds, as best I can tell, that they were gauging the neutral theory of molecular evolution against stronger selectionist ideas. This IS an area of open research interest, though these two ideas are not mutually exclusive, and most biologists think they are compatible and complementary.
Actually, give your government a little credit. These anti-science resolutions are coming about precisely because your STATE leaders are trying to improve and revise the science standards to make sure kids actually, like, learn things in school, instead of tiptoeing around evolution like many schools do.
The sweet tooth may be a pretty simple phenomenon: being social creatures, we see thoughts and intentions behind just about everything. As such, we all naturally want to "talk to" existence and relate to the universe as if it were another sort of person. Having some big person out there watching over you is a pretty naturally appealing thought, especially to children for whom the similar model of parents is already well established.
Not sure what your post has to do with the one it replied to, but that was a pretty good summary of the oft never-heard Catholic response to Protestant fundamentalism.
People were asking saints to intercede for them long before the Bible existed: the fact that it isn't the Bible doesn't mean it wasn't fundamental to original Christian worship.
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An uncanny number of creationist cranks turn out to be engineers by training: insisting that they know biology better than biologists, physics better than physicists, and so on.
Seriously, I'm annoyed with most science journalists more and more everyday. Most textbooks already discuss the matter of groupings, as well as mentioning that there are several different competing ideas about the best way to categorize things. The article makes it sound like this latest insight means everything is flat out wrong and needs to be discarded, when in fact all it needs is simply its account of the latest progress in the debate updated in the next edition.
You're deeply confused. And I don't get it. I see people misusing and being corrected on their misuse of the word "theory" all the time: you'd think that the number of people misusing it would decrease. There is no "still" a theory. Evolutionary theory is and always will be called a scientific theory, never a fact. It is made up of and supported by all sorts of scientific facts (including things that one might call Evolutionary fact, such as common descent), in fact, but "theory" is science's term for "body of explanation" not "this is just speculation."
To Jews, pretty much most of Christian interpretation of their Scriptures is considered exactly what you are accusing the parent of.
I don't think you can establish that religion "gets it right" or not in the same sense as science. Whether religion "gets it right" mostly seems to involve whether or not people find it compelling: but there isn't any body of evidence against which we can judge, for instance, the truth (or even the intelligibility) of the Trinity. And there's hordes and hordes of evidence that believers, when confronted with disconfirming facts on things that can be tested, will actually strengthen their faith rather than causing them to discard it. In short: science and mathematics both provide a method for error-checking. Religion doesn't seem to have any such consistent method or even ethic. Literally anything goes when it comes to justifying a belief or asserting that it's true. Many apologists think that's a strength (look, we can explain away any objection!) but it's actually a huge weakness.
It was my understanding that we'd gone from "many think that" to pretty much accepting this model. The terminology and naming conventions are, of course, always a mess, but on the substantive issues, these three big groups seemed pretty much a done deal to me last time I checked.
For all the article's blaring headlines, this actually isn't all that big of a deal in terms of anything previous being wrong or anything substantive overturned. It's basically a small insight that allows us to have more consistent Linnaean naming convention (a system that is already well known to be deeply flawed and clumsy... but hey, it's tradition!). For cladists, it's an interesting bit of extra detail about previously uncertain connections, but changes nothing much at all.
Er, I'm not sure the actual paper says anything about mutations directly, or even could, considering their methodology. What they observed were the traits and their genetic makeup of current species, not those species who may have had mutations that didn't last until the present. What they were looking for seems to be something very different from what the article implies. They wanted to see how selection biased a highly conserved feature was compared to what we normally assume is random drift over time. But even random drift is not the same thing as all random mutations being preserved for observation.
Actually, I don't think the researchers were doing or trying to do anything of the sort. The article seems to have misrepresented their work.
Well, not so fast. Ben Stein, current pimp for ID in his new movie, seems to imply just that in some of his interviews: he talks about cells "intelligently" deciding how to change their DNA. Sounds like something he garbled out of either mainstream science (in which there are all sorts of mechanisms, though not intelligent ones, that change DNA in particular ways) or out of his many talks with ID theorists: so that idea may well now be part of their mix. Bottom line is that these guys will latch on to just about anything as long as it has the words "intelligent" and "evolution is wrong" in there somewhere.
It's consistent with every other poll on the subject. You can talk about different kinds of creationism, but the classic evolution denying kind is clearly no tiny minority: it's a majority. I mean, around 44% of Americans believe that the world is only a matter of 10,000 years old or less, right off the bat. That's not subtlety speaking. And really, the only types of creationism that are scientifically sensible are the range from theistic evolution to deism, which virtually no one means to include when they talk about "creationism" (they often don't even mean to include ID, which is fiercely opposed to theistic evolution), and is a very small number of people (mostly practicing scientists who are religious and philosophers).
Actually, the article sort of sucks, so don't fault folks for getting the wrong impression from it. The real paper's summary section is a heck of a lot more clear (if drier and less overdramatic) than the article.
Polls say otherwise. A substantial MAJORITY of people in the US are creationists in the sense that they think that evolution is incompatible with the Bible (i.e. the true history)
The article is definately out of whack. What they were measuring were the developments over time, not the mutations. In fact, there's no way to classify most mutations as beneficial or detrimental unless you actually sit and watch to see if they survive. Furthermore, from the actual paper it looks like this was a study of natural phylogeny, not sitting around watching generation after generation grow.
Yep. The article does look all out of whack, claiming that the findings are a lot more dramatic and generalizable than they were intended to be. In any case, this paper is all about whether biased or unbiased selection of traits dominates, not absolutely proving that one thing or another is the case. The headline is ridiculous and the discussion of the results laughable... which is especially absurd given that the paper itself is much more clear about what they set out to test and what they found. One more reason that science bloggers are a way way better source of information about specialized work than most science "journalists."
Actually, I'm pretty sure this experiment, while confirming evolution as pretty much every other such study does, wasn't actually about that at all. The article is misrepresenting the debate: it's almost certainly one between strong selectionists and advocates of the neutral theory, which is really more of a technical debate over genetics than anything having to do with confirming or disconfirming Darwin. I tried to parse through these issues here.
No truth to the rumor. By what mechanism could anyone ever be cured of a disease by sleeping with someone who happened not to have had sex before? The rumor led to untold numbers of rapes, unfortunately.
Actually, the article is pretty confusing on this, so I wouldn't jump to conclusions as to what it was actually talking about. It sounds, as best I can tell, that they were gauging the neutral theory of molecular evolution against stronger selectionist ideas. This IS an area of open research interest, though these two ideas are not mutually exclusive, and most biologists think they are compatible and complementary.
Of course there was no truth to it.
Actually, give your government a little credit. These anti-science resolutions are coming about precisely because your STATE leaders are trying to improve and revise the science standards to make sure kids actually, like, learn things in school, instead of tiptoeing around evolution like many schools do.
The sweet tooth may be a pretty simple phenomenon: being social creatures, we see thoughts and intentions behind just about everything. As such, we all naturally want to "talk to" existence and relate to the universe as if it were another sort of person. Having some big person out there watching over you is a pretty naturally appealing thought, especially to children for whom the similar model of parents is already well established.
Not sure what your post has to do with the one it replied to, but that was a pretty good summary of the oft never-heard Catholic response to Protestant fundamentalism. People were asking saints to intercede for them long before the Bible existed: the fact that it isn't the Bible doesn't mean it wasn't fundamental to original Christian worship.
Oops, here be da link.