Darwin Evolving Into A Tricky Exhibit 1364
rbochan writes "The new Darwin Exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History
has 'failed to find a corporate sponsor in the United States because American companies are anxious not to take sides in the heated debate between scientists and fundamentalist Christians over the theory of evolution' according to articles at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Telegraph, and The Register. The $US3 million needed for the exhibit was met by private charitable donations."
Most disturbing..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Arguably, much of our current understanding of biology and bioscience (development of drugs and antibiotics, medicine etc...etc...etc...) and many things that may surprise you are due to a fundamental understanding of biology. Try future developments in body armor, engineering, acoustics, propulsion and search algorithms on for size. All of those disparate fields have been influenced and guided by cross-polination from bioscience and ignoring or even worse, rejecting a scientific understanding of the world will only hold us back.
It is particularly ironic because one of the missions of the American Museum of Natural History is education of those very same individuals and corporations who are benefitting from decades of science education in the United States.
Religious extremism come in many flavors folks, and if we are not careful, we are going to lose our edge. Remember, this country is only a couple hundred years old. Those societies that have embraced education and science historically are those societies that survive.
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that many of the same CxOs who refused to risk their company's image put their own money in the pot. Now if only they'd do the same for everything else.
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank goodness Intel took a stand on the theory of ultraviolet lithography. Thank goodness Boeing took a stand on the theory of aerodynamic lift. Thank goodness Dole took a stand on the theory that biological contamination can cause disease (did you know you can't even see bacteria?). Thank goodness all the corporations that develop AIDS medicine have taken a stand on biological
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:5, Insightful)
TW
uhm, hardly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Feminized? (Score:3, Insightful)
Before I jump to conclusions, could you please further
elaborate on your meaning with this statement?
Women and men are different. I know that is not a popular opinion, but the boobies and the having kids thing kinda comes to mind.
Maybe I'm just traditional or old fashioned, but I see women/females as being more nurturing, emotional, and less competitive and authoritarian than men.
Western society is getting more like the emotional and nurturing side. Like the "high s
Re:Feminized? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ho, ho, ho.
You, my friend, have apparently never encountered more than one woman at a time.
Women are _way_ more competitive than men are in regards to their social pecking order.
Essentialism is a lie. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a nice, provable biological difference.
"Maybe I'm just traditional or old fashioned, but I see women/females as being more nurturing, emotional, and less competitive and authoritarian than men."
Now, is that a product of biology, or a product of the surroundings in which a woman is raised? You don't know. No one does.
Women and men are equivalent in every sense that matters. To say that someone is aggresive because they have a penis is the same thing as saying someone is pleasant because they have a vagina. To say that someone is good with money because they are a jew, or that someone is less intelligent because they are black -- these are all features of a theory called essentialism. Essentialism says that someone is a certain way because of their biology, not their own free will, their experiences, or how they were raised.
I think we should take a serious look at how women are raised and how we expect them to behave (Google search for pleasant [google.ca]; note how the 2nd hit is for a doll maker called "American Girl"!), rather than use biological means to justify differences. Essentialism is a lie that people like Adolf Hitler used to justify terrible attrocities. For you to pipe up in support of essentialism is a mark of how little you have researched your own opinions.
Re:Essentialism is a lie. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's way too generalized to reflect reality.
Biological differences can (and do) lead to differences in emotional depth and "emotional intelligence", cognitive abilities, athletic potentials both realized and nascent, immune system / disease resistance, height, intelligence, secondary sexual characteristics, bone structure, child bearing / rearing capabilities, eye color, bone density, resistance to pain... the list is endless because it includes everything.
It is politically correct nonsense to say that biological differences, miscast in PC terms as "essentialism", are non-existant or irrelevant. In real human terms, differences matter when they are significant; and they they are certainly significant when they are pivotal, or fundamental, in degree with regard to a particular situation. If you ignore differences, you may be shooting yourself right in the foot; taking them too seriously when it is not warranted can just as easily lead to problems. The bottom line is you have to think about every situation and decide if the differences at hand are relevant to the problems and issues at hand. The answer, however, is not to declare that observing differences is "essentialism."
Albert Einstein was not the "equal" of any random Down's syndrome child you care to pick. And why? Bloody biology, that's why. Likewise, women are not and never will be, barring genetic manipulation, "the same" as men. The expectation that they should be is absolutely ludicrous. This does not rule out any particular role or capability; what it says is that the fit to a particular cognitive, physical, emotional, or artistic target is going to be different between men and women because of biological differences. This, in turn, should encourage us to consider every situation as a unique challenge to meet it with the best fit we can. Not to cleave to some politically correct but scientifically bewildered mode of thinking.
To which, of course, we can add environmental influences from nutrition to parenting and schooling. The very concept that people are, or even could be, "the same" is just plain medieval.
There's nothing like politically correct psychobabble to blind us to reality.
BLASPHEMY!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
BEDEVERE:
Tell me. What do you do with witches?
CROWD:
Burn! Burn them up! Burn!...
BEDEVERE:
And what do you burn apart from witches?
VILLAGER #1:
More witches!
VILLAGER #2:
Wood!
BEDEVERE:
So, why d
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Provided it's a stand you agree with. And you're not exactly in a huge majority. So don't hold your breath.
I am willing to give my business to those companies that provide me with items I want. Specifically, I buy stuff that's worth more to me than the money I offer in exchange. I'm rational.
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, they are challenging scientific understanding (Score:5, Informative)
I've posted this before, in one of the threads a few weeks ago, but there was an article in American Scientist [americanscientist.org] about Intelligent Design that looks at the larger picture. A key bit is this:
Evolution is just the beginning, folks. This is about replacing science with religion.Re:You're in the minority. (Score:4, Interesting)
FWIW, since you bring up the prospect of leaving the U.S. for "greener pastures," there are huge concentrations of anti-science leftists here in Canada, and overall a large degree of hostility to science as with other social democratic paradises (e.g. look at Europe's wider social reaction to genetic modification).
Educate yourself!
They're not against science. (Score:4, Insightful)
Again, you're confused. Many Europeans do not resent genetic research. They do not, however, believe it to be correct to use such knowledge in ways that would violate basic human rights. We're talking about using such knowledge to create slaves, for instance. Or to dangerously modify crops.
The people you deem as "anti-science leftists" (many of whom are extremely conservative or libertarian) are often very pro-science. They take a stand against what may very well be considered unjustifiable use of scientific knowledge. We're talking about taking a stand against genetically modified crops, animal testing, and so forth. They're not against the entirety of science, unlike many religious fundamentalists.
Re:You're in the minority. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's worth pointing out that for much of human history those teaching and preserving literacy have been the religious.
-stormin
How Inconsiderate (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You're in the minority. (Score:5, Funny)
Now there's an Idea...
Since the Pharma industry is based heavily on biology and bio-chemistry and in turn on theories of evolution, maybe we could start a campaign to equate medical drug use with support of evolution. Hit the zealots where they live (literally) by accusing them of supporting, by act, the theory of evolution if they take any medical drugs. Suggest if they really do not support evolution, they should forgo their medicine.
Then sit and watch the fallout. Some will bow to self preservation, continue using their medicine and dissapear from public view. Others might actually stop using their drugs. Either way, they are less likely to be a public problem.
I'm only suggesting this to the most vocal public critics. Hit them where they live, their public image. Alas, the probable effect is that lots of little old ladies would take it too literally and stop taking their own medicine in support. That would be a bad situation, even if it was of their own making.
Re:You're in the minority. (Score:3, Insightful)
And that just means that they're ignorant. If they had any kind of science education at all, they would know better than to try and prove that anything is a "fact". Such a feat is impossible, which is why we have scientific theories that model the workings of the universe. Scientists know that our models aren't per
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:3)
All you're trying to do is use weak character assasination to smear anyone that doesn't agree without.
The professor is right. The American Taliban are not so numerous but they are quite loud.
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:5, Insightful)
For Pete's sake... does anybody question anything anymore?
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:5, Insightful)
One must bear in mind that the Vatican doesn't even think that "Intellegent Design" has any place in a science classroom.
No, shenanigans of this sort are being driven by the protestant equivalent of the Taliban.
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume what you mean by 'society' is not an ethnic group but a kind of recognisable contiguous social formation. Even this is hard to define--for example, did British society as we know it today begin in the dark ages, did it begin 1000 years ago or is it really so fundamentally different now to what it was then that we can't call it the same society?
But even if we forget this difficulty and just go by conventional definitions, for things like the Roman Empire or ancient Egypt, I think you would be hard pressed to find any society that has ever lasted more than 4000 years. For example, ancient Egypt as we think of it, i.e. as a unified state/civilisation, lasted from approximately 3200 BC to 332 BC [wikipedia.org], i.e. less than 3000 years. And despite the old European myth of an 'ancient Africa', most of the sub-Saharan African societies that existed at the time of colonisation were largely the result of migration of Bantu peoples [wikipedia.org] starting in approximately the 2nd millennium BC making these societies at the very most 4000 years old, but in reality because of the lack of written history we have know way of knowing if there was much historical continuity in them at all, as opposed to changing through many phases.
The idea of civilisations that exist in recognisable form for very long periods of time is a myth. Human society is inherently unstable. Tribal groups as much as other kinds of society often destroy each other, or destroy the environment on which they depend through overexploitation. As far as anyone knows, there has just never really been a time when there have been societies that have lasted much more than 4000 years, and even the 3000 years of the Egyptian state is based on a very loose definition of a society when you consider the changes that occurred in Egyptian history.
Don't mean to nitpick, but if you are trying to claim that religion holds societies together for many thousands of years, I don't think the case can be argued on that basis.
Tongue-in-cheek: (Score:4, Funny)
The Illuminati.
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:5, Insightful)
May I point that the Chinese society began in B.C. times. While Babylon evaporated, Greece subsided, Egypt mummified, and Roman collapsed, the Chinese culture survived, and still running strong today.
Sure, the political ideology has changed along the way, from citystate-hood (pre BC times) to imperialism to democracy (very short period of time pre-WW2) to communism, yet the Chinese culture continues to evolve and flourish.
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Before and maybe during this time, there existed city states and small settlements, which given the size of the landmass were likely to be linguistically, culturally and ethnically diverse.
If you call that kind of entity a society contiguous with unified China, then you might as well call pre-historic Europe a society contiguous with the Roma
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:3, Insightful)
After all, lets look at the Muslim extremist. They justify terrorism by stating that they are following their religious teaching. According to your arguement, they are benefiting for moral codes?
Lets look at Pat Robber
Re:Most disturbing..... (Score:3, Insightful)
> Hm, so are you of the opinion that religion can have no benefit at all,
No, of course not; one thing I like about religion (even though I'm not religious) is that it can force you to think about the big questions.
> ... and that there is a natural moral code completely independant of any religious beliefs?
yes of course; you seem to have missed about two centuries of philosophical debate: start with Kant [wikipedia.org] and keep on reading. You've missed quite a bit, apparently.
You say it like it's a bad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, I don't know many Christians, even young-earth creationists, who'd actively go after companies that promoted this exhibit. Jerry Falwell's group might bitch a bit, but they do that anyway.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Funny)
Well sure. Ever since Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, they've been suspicious of all fruits.
Debate? (Score:5, Insightful)
As in those presenting the current crop of alternate theories have a leg to stand on? This is really news to me.
Here's the ticket (Score:5, Funny)
I think Darwin's theory needs to evolve to survive in its ever changing environment.
Why not big pharma? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not big pharma? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why not big pharma? (Score:5, Interesting)
Go fishing.
Catch a fish.
There you go.
(Okay, that was a flip answer. Here's a serious one.)
The timescale for major evolutionary change in multicellular life is so enormous that we're not going to see bacteria evolving into fish. However, I've noticed that when creationists use this argument, which turns up in many different forms, they have no idea how diverse microbial life actually is. When you say "they evolve, but they remain a bacteria," I think you have no idea just how different from each other various forms of bacteria actually are. There's more difference, in fact, between various strains of bacteria that we have observed evolving into each other than there is between a fish and a human being.
Re:Why not big pharma? (Score:4, Informative)
You have to remember there are plenty of evolutionary paths for any organism to follow. Humans arguably have evolved somewhat separately while still maintaining compatible DNA. Let us take a look at the case of skin pigmentation. People in the northern most extremes of the world like Scandinavia and Russia developed light skin pigmentations because our bodies did not require as much protection from sun light in these areas. The days were shorter and sunlight exposure as such was also shorter, because of locality. Look at people as you move further south, skin tones begin to get darker the longer your days and more direct your sunlight begins to get. You have people in the Mediterranean and Middle East with darker, "olive" skin and as you move into Africa you begin to get individuals with even darker skin.
The Evolution of man is actually well documented from early ape-like humans to modern man of today. Evolution is a long process and not something you can expect to see overnight. Animals and plants have adapted to their environments and find ways to survive, and the ones that survive go on to breed until the new traits have replaced the older ones completely, or a divergence occurs and a new species incompatible with the previous occurs.
Please check out this site [talkorigins.org] and if you come up with a new argument that actually attempts to present fact then please feel free.
huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, #######.
Show me a single-celled organism evolve into a multi-celled organism.
zygote ==> blastocyte.
It is exactly parallel to some essential evolutionary steps, and it happens to everyone!
There are these leaps in evolution that requires some magical altering of how life works at all that evolution just can't explain.
This claim is completely baseless. The leaps of evolution are exactly what does explain how life works. It is, so far, the only theory that adequately explains empirical data on speciation and the differentiation of lifeforms. Just the patterns that ID loves to refer to as *designed*, just the challenges that ID refers to as *irreducible* are the strongest corroboration of the theory of evolution.
You can't expect anyone to believe that you have flowers that rely on bees to fertilize them and bees that rely on flowers to feed on that have managed to "evolve" from some roots.
There are several problems here, beginning with the expectation of belief. No one expects you to *believe* anything. You believe in a God, you accept a theory. An essential insight that you miss is the fact that evolution is opportunistic, not deterministic. Bees eat flower sap because it is there and few other organisms compete for it. Thousands of species of flowers have nothing to do with bees, relying on beetles, ants or birds.
How droll that we are still having this pseudo-debate. I thought this subject tired and thoroughly vanquished thirty years ago in high-school. Now we are further behind than ever. America has been ever superstitious and resistant to authority (scientific or political, even religious). It is the infantile wing of American anti-authoritarianism, and the charlatans that do not scruple to pander to it, which feeds this disease of faith-based doubting.
Re:Why not big pharma? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh my God! You're right! You just proved evolution is impossible! All of those highly educated professional scientists completly overlooked that!
Oh, and by the way you also just proved that it is impossible snowflakes to form. You know, those for complex highly structured snowflakes that spontaneously form out of chaotic water vapor in the air.
It's unbelievable how scientifically illiterate and ignorant people somehow think they are qwualified to critique the ENTIRE educated professional scientific community that has studied these things and all of the evidence. The attacks on evolution are just as commical as if these people were critiquing nuclear fusion and the explanation of how the sun shines.
By claiming that the second law of thermodynamics prohibits evolution all you have done is proove that you are completely uninformed and unqualified to to competently discuss the subject.
I'm sorry for being so harsh, but after the umpteen-hundreth time of people demonstrating their ignorance and making the same flagrantly INVALID arguments it tends to get a bit tedious and one tends to lose patients. You want to see a bacteria evolve into a fish? And what, I sask you, would you say to someone attacking relativity and demanding "show me my watch slow down when I drive fast in a car". What would you say to someone who argued that conservation of mass proves relativity is wrong because things can't get heavier when they move fast?
There is a REASON ththat 99.9+% of educated professional biologists accept evolution. A REASON that there is absolutely zero scientific controversy over the fundamentals of evolution. These educated professionals understand how it works and they have studied the staggering quantities of conclusive evidence.
You don't need to be a professional and have a biology degree to understand what evolution actually says and how it actually works and to independantly review the staggering quantities of conclusive evidence supporting evolution, but you do need the proper extensive education to be able to competently argue these scientists are wrong on anything in particular... much less to make the rather bold claim that THE ENTIRE EDUCATED PROFESSIONAL SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY is completely wrong about everything.
What would you say to someone with no physics degree who attempted to claim that quantum mechanics was wrong? Who attempted to claim that the entire scientific community was competely wrong about quantum mechanics.
I can only assume your highschool provided a dismal or nonexistant education in evolution and all of the evidence behind it. Hardly supprising, it seems many highschools are failing to provide a proper education i the area because of the public controversy and religious controversy over evolution (as I said there is zero scientific controversy over the fundamentals of evolution). Get a decent science textbook and discover for yourself why evolution is not a violation of the second law of thermodynamics, the same reason snowflakes are not a violation of the second law of thermodynamics.
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Here's a silly thought (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Here's a silly thought (Score:5, Insightful)
Darwin Exhibit huh (Score:4, Funny)
This just says something sad about America (Score:5, Interesting)
Making Evolution palatable to Fundamentalist Chris (Score:5, Funny)
Now only the geeks will learn about it.
Re:Making Evolution palatable to Fundamentalist Ch (Score:3, Funny)
Shouldn't that be: Step 4. Jesus Prophets!!!
The Real Problem Here (Score:5, Insightful)
You can ignore what's wrong without worry. It's a lot harder to ignore what you know is right. It's a lot more likely that the dinosaurs are millions of years old, rather than that the entire Earth was created only 8K years ago and God put the fossils there to confound the unbelievers.
Trying to remove the only theory that actually has some evidence to support it from discussion overall, or elevate truly unproven speculations to having equal weight, only confuses children -- and harms the nation's future.
The problem with the exhibit (Score:3, Funny)
If they had only put a picture of Michaelangelo's 'Creation of Adam' instead of crusty ole Darwin, the money would have come pouring in.
Imagine the creationist's surprise when they find out that God is a woman in a surgeon's uniform.
Suggested reading: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4F
That's it! I'm leaving America... (Score:3, Funny)
Some things never change (Score:3, Interesting)
Answer to ID - the Avian Flu (Score:3, Insightful)
If they answer "Yes" you can slam them. Basically, the Avian Flu is only a threat if you think evolution is valid. The only way it can be a problem to humans is if it mutates, evolves, into a strain that can spread from human to human.
So, if they're afraid of the Avian Flu, they MUST believe in evolution. If they're not afraid of it, all the better. They'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
I just want to say this (Score:4, Insightful)
These figures/beliefs were created by the same creatures who believe and idolise them, i.e. humans.
In our existance (this world, universe) there are things that occur in this world that we cannot yet explain, this can make us feel somewhat insignificant and futile in our existance. It raises such questions as
- Why am I here?
- What is my purpose?
- What will happen to me when I no longer exist?
- What will be the consequences of my actions in this life?
This can somewhat be related to the need to believe in something!! (put simply in one aspect). Humans also feel compelled to hold morals and respect for others. Some(most) of us naturally become upset when people are treated unfairly(+many synonyms). Religion has been designed and evolved to accomodate and somewhat enforce this. E.g. don't kill, don't steal, don't cheat people, don't kill animals, don't eat meat, don't be greedy etc. Someone could probably better explain this need better than I can but be seen to be present in every culture with certain themes current through out.Here are some other characters that I have believed in over my life (especially as a child) that were created by man
- Santa Claus
- The Tooth fairy
- The Easter bunny
- Superman
- The Teeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Monkey Magic
- Jesus
I was told by an enlightened Christian friend in the past that I would be going to hell after I died due to me not accepting God and Jesus... at the time I didn't ask her what the consequences were for no longer believing in the other characters, I wonder what the consequences would be?--
This is for you Claire
So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
You get what you pay for, fellas.
Too much fear. (Score:3, Insightful)
Myths (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:5, Informative)
That is hardly helpful... (Score:3, Insightful)
When debating with many sects of American Protestantism, whose views of Roman Catholicism range from suspicion to abject hatred.
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:3, Insightful)
I had a similar situation at my church, and I pretty much just stated what I believe in a non-offensive manner, and no one freaked out or anything. One or two people argued with me a bit, but nothing big. Unless you go to a VERY conservative church, you shouldn't have any problems.
As one of those fundamentalists... (Score:3, Insightful)
Since origins cannot be tested, observed or falsified, it is not a scientific field of study. As a proponent of ID, I only care that my philosophy is taught in the science classroom as long as the naturalist's philosophy of origins is taught there. Sagan's line "The universe is all that there is, all that there ever was, and all that will be" haunts me. Why must materialist philosophy be taught in science class? As long as we're doing the wrong thing in that way, you shoul
Re:As one of those fundamentalists... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gould contended that scientists have an 'a priori commitment to naturalism' which in my view prevents scientists from considering whether something supernatural might be the primary cause.
Actually, the difference between the "natural" and "supernatural" doesn't exist a prioi -- we just consider anything which has a scientific explanation to be "natural". So before Newton came up with overwhelming evidence for gravity, the idea of action at a distance (i.e. forces, etc.) was considered to be supernatural (Newton himself was troubled by the need to make use of "occult forces" in his explanations).
The trouble with creationism, then, isn't that it relies on supernatural explanations (whatever they are exactly), but that it doesn't make any predictions. Let's assume that God created life on Earth. What does that tell you about life on Earth? Nothing, since God is inscrutable and he could have made life in whatever form he wanted to. Evolution, on the other hand, does make predictions. For example you predict that organisms will be highly modular and structured, that organisms will show clear similarities owing to their having a common ancestor, etc.
Re:As one of those fundamentalists... (Score:4, Insightful)
People frequently confuse "thinking really hard about data" with "doing science." You can certainly think rationally and logically about the world around you and come to the conclusion that belief in the supernatural is warranted. That doesn't mean you're a nutcase. It does, however, mean that you've ventured into an area in which science is of no help and results of scientific study will be meaningless. If we allow reasoning about the supernatural into science classes instead of philosophy classes where it belongs, we will fail to teach our students the distinction between the two.
Again, this doesn't mean that the philosophers who think about these things are stupid or wrong or that science is the sole arbiter of the truth. It just means that science covers only a limited subset of what philosophy and logic cover (albeit it does so with phenomenal success) and that we do our children a disservice by not pointing that out.
Re:As one of those fundamentalists... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's why we teach "materialist philosophy": It works. Regardless of faith in supernatural beings, gas still makes your car go. Even if you disbelieve in petroleum, the engine will run. As they say, 'reality' is what is left even when you stop believing.
It is not practical to explore all possibilities. It's POSSIBLE that an alien in another galaxy makes my engine run, or Jesus, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster... or chemical reactions. Since the latter seems to work remarkably well, the burden is on proponents of other claims to provide evidence.
Scientists content that there is nothing outside nature. This is because we have not experienced anything that is not explainable within our 'natural' outlook. There are things we don't understand very well, sure, but nothing entirely outside the rules.
Of course, it IS possible the God (or aliens, or the FSM) has rigged the universe to appear 'natural'. I can't see worshipping such a vindictive creator
Re:As one of those fundamentalists... (Score:5, Insightful)
The usefulness of an underlying philosophy to science is undoubtable though. The philosophy that the universe is ordered has helped aid scientific discovery (until quantum physics). The philosophy that the universe has a beginning and is constantly changing was fought against hard by the majority of the scientific community who believed in the philosophy of a relatively static universe until the data was too much for it to stand. The philosophy that evolution governs all biology has worked for quite some time, but it is a philosophy, and it is possible, like Newtonian physics, that it governs only a part of the full field. ID proposes more uniqueness and order to living organisms than evolution currently allows. As a guiding philosophy, it lives or dies on the biological discoveries in the future.
A governing philosophy to part of science should be taught, but not as a scientific fact, and a historical view of the different philosophies that have been successful and discarded would be as useful as teaching the current scientific understanding of reality.
Re:As one of those fundamentalists... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure how anything non-material COULD be taught in a science class. Science is the study of nature and the material world, it says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of supernatural forces or entities. Supernatural explanations might well be correct, but they aren't measurable or testable, so in the context of science there simply isn't much to discuss. The alternative is that every measurement you take and experiment you perform has to be disclaimed as possibly supernatural in result, which again may be correct but doesn't add anything to the discussion.
Arguments over the validity of our senses, the possibility of being deceived by the material world and other existentialist dilemmas are certainly good for students to have, but they belong in the category of formal logic and philosophy, not science.
It strikes me as someone complaining that their physical education class doesn't also cover mental health topics -- that isn't the subject of the class! There is no judgement being placed on the value of mental health simply because your gym teacher doesn't discuss it -- indeed, most gym teachers and mental health professionals would agree that a healthy body and mind complement each other. Trying to shoehorn a discussion about depression into the rules of baseball would be as pointless as discussing supernatural forces in a science class.
As another religious person... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see evolution as a big threat. Does it really make Man any lower than the doctrine of The Fall or Original Sin does? Does it necessarily deny the existence of a creator? Does that really take away any capacity to move from a fallen state and be Spiritually born of God, which is the important part of Christianity anyway? The only thing it really seems to threaten is some specific, literal readings
It's about tolerance and religious freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a movement of people hostile to the Christian worldview and this step is the next one in the removal of my freedom of speech and in the battle for the minds of Ameri
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:5, Interesting)
"A prayer in a public school. God has no place within these walls, just like facts don't have a place within an organized religion." -From The Simpsons
So, that's a glib answer, but when it comes right down to it, I'm hard pressed to agree they're doing anything wrong.
Personally, I'm an atheist, and a believer in the scientific process. ID, in my view, is a load of claptrap. And while I might join you in rolling my eyes as a Sunday school goes on about such unscientific nonsense as "irreducible complexity", you must understand I have a similar reaction when someone goes on about a virgin birth - and I suspect you would not share my contempt, then.
If people want to argue vociferously that faith-based concepts like ID should not be taught in science class (and I agree they should not), then it's hard to get too worked up when they teach them in church. I won't condemn a church for teaching ID within their walls, any more than I would condemn them for the host of other un-scientific explanations and teachings they offer.
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's pretend people are lemmings, and, you happen to be a "rational" lemming and stand outsi
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:3, Informative)
You're blaming a belief in the supernatural to Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Are you insane? Have you ever watched any of those shows? You think for a second that some teenager sees Sarah Michelle Gellar kicking a vampire or Alissa Milano disappearing in a bad special effect and decides, "Hey, you know what? Maybe there IS a god." Supernatura
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:5, Insightful)
So when Christ said "I am the door" (John 10:9), do you suppose he had hinges and a doorknob?
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:4, Insightful)
What amazes me is how people die and kill over something that has as much validity as the AD&D Gods, Dieties & Demigods handbook.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:5, Informative)
The best example is the shape of the Earth. To the ancient Hebrew tribes, their cosmology being based on Mesopotomian notions, the Earth was a flat disc covered by a crystal dome. This is seen plainly in the cosmology put forth in Genesis 1. However, by Greco-Roman times, the spherical shape of the Earth was well known, and no Jew of that period would have doubted that. Thus the older Hebrew cosmology could not be seen as literally true, so Genesis was not read literally.
It is very unfortunate that a certain small breed of Christian has decided to rewrite two thousand years of theology and in the process turn their holy book into an object of derision. A literal reading of Genesis makes it clearly false, and to make it jive, the Literalist ends up having to find interpretations so strained and inane that it undermines their whole position.
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:5, Insightful)
for I have seen the shadow on the moon,
and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.
-- Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521)
Literal Interpretation is Heresy (Score:5, Insightful)
Fundimentalists that insist on a literal interpretation should be called to task as Heretics. I will argue that a Fundimentalist that reject his intellect is rejecting one of God's greatest gifts.
Re:The Dumbing-Down Of America, part XXVII (Score:3, Insightful)
Welcome to hardball politics, where your opponents latch on to extremist nutjobs in order to tar you as a nutjob yourself. And it will continue to be so as long as conservatives fail to make the case that anti-science kookery is not a necessary part of conservatism. And I say that as a conservative,
Re:Agenda..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Care to back that up with some evidence (from sources other than the creationist research orgs)?
Re:Agenda..... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Agenda..... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Agenda..... (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case, Darwin's experience of religion was fairly limited. Most religions by now have come to terms with the discoveries of science and natural philosophy, including most forms of Christianity. It is not "Christians" who object to the Theory of Gravity^WRelativity^WEvolution, it is a tiny, but vocal (and annoying, and scary), minority of Christians. Christians who no more represent the mainstream of Christianity than the Muslim suicide bombers (who they strongly resemble) represent the mainstream of Mohammedism.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended
us to forgo their use."
-- Galileo Galilei
Mainstream and radical Christians (Score:3, Insightful)
You know how a lot of right-wingers like to attack Islam because (no matter what it does) it doesn't condemn "extremists" enough?
Yeah?
I want to know the same thing about mainstream Christianity. If these people really are completely out of whack with mainstream Christians, then *why* do said mainstream Christians not condemn them and distance t
He did not (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Agenda..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Evolution is Theory After All (Score:5, Insightful)
As to the mechanism of evolution, yes there is debate in the scientific commmunity. As to whether evolution has occurred, there is no debate in the scientific community.
To me I see those zealots who accept evolution as fact in the same light as how *they* perceive Christians and Christianity: mindless minions of bad logic and reasoning.
So you reject the notion that there is any evidence for the *fact* that evolution has occurred?
Explain why there are so many shared genes between species. In fact, the human genome is one big code sharing exercise.
It just seems like evolutionists want to skip a whole bunch of steps and not do the actual science required to figure out if the evidence supports their theory or not.
What steps have they skipped?
That's the scientific method, folks. You never PROVE anything: you have evidence that either supports or doesn't support your theory.
And you haven't done anything to support your position other than flap your arms around wildly.
Show us the holes in evolution. Show us where steps have been missed. Show us how YOU would apply the scientific method any differently to, say, the theory of gravity.
Re:Evolution is Theory After All (Score:5, Insightful)
But it doesn't PROVE evolution.
Then I guess nothing other than the evidence you have cited yourself will ever convince you that evolution is real.
They're not doing the hard science and answering the tough questions, like why, for instance, if intelligence in humans is SO important and crucial to our survival (we have no sharp teeth, claws, we can't run or climb or swim well compared to the rest of the animal kingdom), then why did it take so long for intelligence to develop in humans (say within the past 100,000 years)? How was it possible that WE survived all those years effectively at a huge disadvantage physically?
That intelligence did not develop in the last 100K years. It developed over the course of 3.5 million years.
That's a tough question that NO ONE has been able to answer definitively with facts.
Pick up a good anthropology text written in the last twenty years. You will see the evidence presented for gradual intellectual development in higher primates including humans.
Instead, what we get is "there was once this primordial soup in the oceans (what it was we couldn't tell ya but it was there! and we can't replicate it!) and then some shit went down and here we are."
That is abiogenesis, not evolution.
You have skipped about 4.5 billion years of development from the primordial soup and humans too.
Wow. I'm stunned by the brilliance of that.
Then you don't read much.
And you're right: gravity is based on theory, just like relativity, and most of the "hard" sciences.
What constitutes a "hard" science?
But there are smart people doing responsible tough science on those theories. And they don't just throw shit on the wall to see what sticks.
Neither do geologists, biologists, paleontologists, or anthropologists.
Have you ever taken one of these courses to see how the ideas that support them were develeoped?
Re:Evolution is Theory After All (Score:5, Informative)
Everyone who read our exchange is laughing at this point. I punched holes in your first argument and now you claim I support you.
I say 100,00 years ago the first signs of human intellidence appear, you say over the course of 3.5 million years. How is it we survived? According to the theory of evolution and "survival of the fittest", we shouldn't be here. But we are. Why?
We survived because our intelligence, developed over the course of 3.5 million years, advanced faster than our predators in that same time frame.
Again, you should be getting this from an anthropology text.
Look at it another way: wouldn't certain animal species that use elaborate mechanisms (think peacock) to attract mates also be more attractive to predators and easier to catch and kill? I mean a peacock can't do shit. *I* can catch one and I'm fat lazy bastard. How come they survived? And how exactly and why did they develop the way they did?
Your statement assumes that peacocks of today existed as they did before humans began domesticating animals. If you are looking for an animal that can't protect itself from predators, look at cattle. They can barely give birth to a calf due to the fact that humans have protected them from predators for thousands of years.
Evolution in action.
And don't get me wrong. I don't think reading some 4,000 year old book did it. There is some other explanation for it, and I leave it up to the scientists to figure those things out. The theory of evolution is a start, but it IS flawed or in another sense incomplete.
I would suggest reading Origins of the Species first before claiming evolution doesn't exist. It can be found here [gutenberg.org].
Re:Evolution is Theory After All (Score:5, Insightful)
Who said our predators were getting faster and stronger?
You have evidence to support that assertion?
Sure, if you live in the modern world with the internet and taxi cabs and books and shit, that'd be a big deal. But if you're some ancestor of ours out in the wild, you'd be pretty low on the totem pole, so to speak, in terms of survivability. So how is it we did it? Before intelligence we had every disadvantage.
So do rabbits. We could climb trees and survived for several million years in trees before the jungle changed to savannah.
Which would you take in a fight: an unarmed man or a bear? a gorilla? a crocodile? a shark? a dog? I wouldn't want to face any of these alone in the wild.
You discount the advantange that prey have: rapid gestation and ovulation cycles.
Did you factor this in when you created your argument?
We were fundamentally physically unequipped to survive in the wild 3.5M years ago.
We didn't look anything like we do now 3.5 million years ago.
Domestication is not evolution.
Domestication is an evolutionary mechanism.
We have domesticated cattle, not caused a genetic mutation that makes them different from previous generations.
You have evidence to support your conclusions?
Close and distant relatives of the domesticated cow continue to survive in the wild, human intervention or not.
Really? Where?
Here in the US there is only the Longhorn and it shares few traits with the domesticated varieties we raise for beef.
Buffalo roamed the plains of North America for millenia before humans with no problems.
By sheer number.
How are they doing now?
Re:Evolution is Theory After All (Score:3, Informative)
I've heard similar arguments before and they always boggle my mind. If it were true that the peacock's plumage would attract more predators, then there would be no
Re:Evolution is Theory After All (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, they can: their feathers make it them look menacing to would-be predators. Now you may not find it very scary, but then again, you probably don't run around naked eating raw meat either.
The theory of evolution is a start, but it IS flawed or in another sense incomplete.
Why "IS" it flawed? Genetic science sure seems to provide a lot of emperical support for evolution having taken place and still taking place. Aren't you familiar with antibiotics?
Re:Evolution is Theory After All (Score:5, Informative)
Evolution does not guarantee that any structure will form. Intelligence is one solution to a particular set of problems, but the overwhelming number of organisms on this planet survive without even possessing more than one cell. However, that being said, intelligence of any kind will give an organism some specific benefits as far as judging, measuring and accumulating information about the environment. Rerun the tape from say, 500 million years ago, and there's no guarantee that you would have any organism with a brain larger than a few thousand neurons. But once you do have organisms with nerve bundles capable of not only receiving sensory data, but manipulating it, then such a species will overcome some of the barriers to such an expensive adaptation (remember, all structures require energy to develop and maintain, which is eye the biomass of this planet is overwhelmingly unicellular). As each member of a population is going to have some variation, some members will have larger or more complicated neural networks, and providing that such a feature of the primitive brain makes those particular members even slightly more likely to survive and reproduce, then, statistically, you will start to see brain size and complexity increase.
This is precisely what we see with hominid evolution. The earliest bipedal apes had brains little larger than a chimpanzee's. As we can see from modern chimps, a larger brain isn't necessarily required for survival. But for early hominids bipedalism meant a new environment, new pressures that a larger brain would make individual members more likely to reproduce. To loosely paraphrase Richard Dawkins, half a brain is better than no brain at all.
You seem to assume that there is some direction to evolution, that somehow a brain must be an inevitable organ, or that human intelligence is some necessary result of some ladder of evolution. Well, it isn't. It's simply good fortune on our part that a larger neural organ in some distant ancestor gave that critter a slight edge in the survival game. Play the tape again, and you might not have anything more complex than a planarian.
But evolution is not a shit-at-the-wall discipline. It makes some key predictions which have been confirmed numerous times since Darwin's day. The faunal progression was the earliest confirmation, but is no longer the most important. The key evidence for evolution now is the molecular data, which clearly shows, as was predicted, that all extant organisms fit within a nested hierarchy with its root to be found in a single common ancestor. With each species we analyze the genome of, we find this key observation only bolstered. All life on this planet came from a single common ancestral population, probably 3.5 to 3.9 billion years ago, though horizontal gene transfer means that it won't be a single ancestor, but rather a small bush of unicellular organisms swapping genes.
Re:Evolution is Theory After All (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Evolution is Theory After All (Score:3, Insightful)
The evolution theory is a theory of processes, not a description of each step.
Of course there are some issues which might need a closer look, such as the Cambrian Explosion. And of course some more subtheories such as punctated equilibrium and convergent evolution might be proposed and be inc
Science does not generate facts. (Score:3, Insightful)
About the only fault that can be found there is Hume's observation that empiricism (it worked the same before, it should work the same again) is a circular argument in that we keep using empiricism because if empiricism worked before, empiricism should work again... But since ever
Re:Nothing ever really changes (Score:5, Insightful)
To my mind, these fundamentalists are more guilty of idolatry. The idolaters of old made themselves graven images of their gods, and worshipped them. In time they came to completely forget their gods and worship the images; this was abhorrent to the Hebrews, whose prohibition on such things had led them to relate to their god more directly.
What is the modern equivalent of these idolaters? Why, the biblical inerrantists. They have made themselves a graven image of God, not made of wood or of gold or marble but of words. They have defined their god so narrowly and restricted him within the ancient text, and cannot conceive of anything beyond the holy scripture. Thus these idolaters try to shout down anyone who dares examine the world itself for clues to the nature of the creation, and confine themselves to Genesis.
It's a tragedy, because assuming for the sake of argument that there is a God, then they're missing some of his best tricks. Evolution is a brilliant hack - a system that you can set up and just let run, and all the work is done for you. It must give God some of the same kind of kick we hackers get when we replace a thousand lines of brutal code with a single concise iterative function... And as for nucleosynthesis, the means by which the heavy elements that constitute much of the Earth were made, if God came up with that then he has a sense of style that I really like. Seeding the universe with metals from supernovae - amazing.
But no. The idolaters remain with their hollow Bronze Age god of words, words that they worship night and day, memorise and repeat to themselves, shout out at street corners... Idolatry, indeed.
Re:Nothing ever really changes (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, mostly because it doesn't really answer any questions either. Now I just have to figure out where that supernatural being came from, and I have no hope of ever figuring that out because by definition a supernatural being is outside of nature.
Is there something hard to understand about conservation of mass-energy? If there's matter and energy in the Universe today, then well proven physical laws tell us t
Re:The "problem" with Evolution (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, Darwin himself made predictions based on his theories that were proven true. Here is a quick overview [pbs.org] of one example - he saw a particular flower and predicted that a particular shape of insect must exist to pollinate it, even though he knew of no such insect at the time. Such an insect was found many years later.
Evolution is called a theory because it does meet the scientific criteria for a theory - it has been thoroughly tested (come on, it's been around for over a century, do you HONESTLY believe no one has thought to test it??) and, yes, mathematically modelled even. Many times.
The problem with Intelligent Design is that it does NOT meet the criteria (that you yourself give) for a theory, but its supporters try to present it as one on equal footing with evolution. ID is a hypothesis or a conjecture, evolution is a theory. You seem to understand the difference - most people's problem is that they don't, and they think that since evolution is a theory that means we have no clue if it's really right.
Re:The "problem" with Evolution (Score:4, Insightful)
Then your understanding is very flawed. Evolution in fact has quite strong predictive power. For example, evolutionary theory is very useful in predicting the number of harmful genes in a particular animal's genome.
In fact one of the greatest trimuphs of science was the use by Darwin himself of evolution to predict existance of certain species of insects by examining the morphology of plants that they would pollinate.