Directly from the linked article (emphasis added):
“Independents and Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe in the theory of evolution. But even among non-Republicans there appears to be a significant minority who doubt that evolution adequately explains where humans came from.“
I will simply provide these two quotes from the article:
1) But even among non-Republicans there appears to be a significant minority who doubt that evolution adequately explains where humans came from.
2)The theory of evolution as an explanation for the origin and development of life has been controversial for centuries, … Although many scientists accept evolution as the best theoretical explanation for diversity in forms of life on Earth, the issue of its validity has risen again…
Insulting them will definitely change their minds. Good call, dcl.
This is one of those needlessly inflammatory posts where I wish the byline was in flashing red text, so casual readers won’t mistakenly think that I wrote it. Andrew’s “Why hire blacks when we can get Mexicans cheaper?” being the archetypal example.
Yes, gahrie, and I stay up late at night worrying about Newton’s Theory of Gravitation too… Please come back when you know what words mean in a scientific context–or were you just attempting to prove my point for me? If that’s the case, then thank you.
And Brendan, at least I kept the needlessly inflammatory part out of the headline and confined it to the, admittedly extremely short, article.
Immediately after reading the text of this post, I knew that Brendan had not written it. It’s insulting, condescending, and unfair … Congratulations, dcl, for bolstering your reputation for being an ass.
Mike, I just think that it does everyone a disservice to not actually tell them that their holding onto a false belief–and that treating that belief with kid gloves, even when demonstrably wrong, only encourages them to hang onto it longer. Instead I think we need to encourage people to come out of the cave of stupidity and engage with reality and jettison their superstitious lunacy.
In partial defense of dcl, the Gallup story’s headline unnecessarily calls attention to the partisan data, when arguably the most intriguing or newsworthy point is the significant number of Americans who claim to believe in evolution and creation simultaneously, even when the questions are worded in such a way as to make them very nearly mutually exclusive concepts. That’s your story — but Gallup sadly and predictably took the easy partisan swipe.
Vicki, it is only insulting to a self selecting sub set of people, and about them, it is simply accurate. I disapprove of mean or insulting jokes about non-self selecting groups (blonds for example) but don’t have a problem with those based on self selecting characteristics, like being a UCLA Bruin or, as in this case, holding silly superstitious beliefs that are demonstrably wrong–no one is born believing in creationism, they have it drilled into their heads by (Okay, this particular joke would be kind of a cheep shot).
Dane, by your own argument, those who hold these beliefs are holding onto a false belief, not relying on reason. (I am *not* arguing that myself, but pointing out your argument). Do you actually fail to understand that by being condescending, dismissive, and needlessly inflammatory (and, I’ll put it bluntly, in my view immature and sophomoric), you are more likely to cause the argument to revolve on emotional grounds, rather than reason? Belief in a higher power and some sort of divine plan is a great comfort for many people, and something which makes them feel more emotionally secure. Appealing to emotion in an argument against comforting beliefs is highly unlikely to get you anywhere.
You feel that someone’s belief in a divine guidance of evolution is a silly superstition and obviously contrary to reality. That’s fine; you can have your beliefs, the Onion’s recent survey notwithstanding. But by claiming that your view is self-evidentially true and thus those who hold opposite views can be dismissive as laughable fools despite being roughly half of the general population, you are likely to alienate many and make life that much more difficult for those of us who actually have to deal with these beliefs in our professional careers. At times like this, I often wish I didn’t have the “support” of individuals like you, as that support actually works to my detriment.
Dane, I think it is funny, you think it is funny, but the reaction you’re getting is clearly that it is insulting to more than just a sub set of people… Unless you think Brendan and Mike are part of that group…
.
gahrie, please forgive me if you’ve discussed this before on the blog, but I’m curious as to what your personal belief is. How would you rate the statement “Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years”? I’m asking because I really do find it disturbing that 66% of Americans (according to this poll) think the statement is true.
(I’m asking sincerely, and I really do want to hear your point of view)
Well no, apparently according to gahrie and his mentioned physics article, gravity might very potentially be wrong, based on proposed and repeatable experimentation vis-a-vi dark matter.
And Mike, it is not the bloody Onion, it’s a Gallup Poll–hmm, speaking of which I seem to have made a typo, need to fix that.
I don’t think Mike said he was insulted by it, just that he found it annoying and sophomoric. I still think he is wrong, but his position on the matter is quite defensible. I think part of the reason the number of people that say yes to the Man created as is 10,000 years ago question is due in part to the fact that reporters in this country treat the idea with kid gloves and the scientists they interview are unwilling to tell the creationist being interviewed at the same time that they are just out and out wrong and that absolutely nothing supports their position. In Europe the media tends to be much tougher on this particular brand of silliness, find it rather laughable that we Americans are actually even still discussing the issue and this attitude seems to correlate to a much lower rate of this particular brand of silliness.
Of course causation does not equal correlation (nor correlation causation if you prefer), but I don’t see any particular reason not to say this is just foolish… If a child went around saying that money grew on trees would it be better to tell him the idea is wrong or agree to disagree based on your position that money does not grow on trees but, nevertheless, his position and opinion certainly should be accorded a position of equality in the debate and that, indeed it might well be an open question as to weather or not money grows on trees. I’m sorry but the latter just seems like a dumb corse of action.
ahh, well you should have said so, that’s a horse of a different color. Of course the article is wrong, if the Gallup numbers are to be trusted it is closer to 60% of the population that is not entitled to their opinion.
Hey - if Dane wants to “believe the theory of evolution is true “{my emphasis}, then who are we to make fun of him … the scientific-minded amongst us accept the Theory of Evolution as a plausibe model - but stop short of having it as an item of belief …
Personally, I like to think that the Creator could well have used Darwinian Selection as the Creator’s Method of Choice to create the various species … I find it to be just as plausible as the Theory of Evolution …
hey, you know if that helps you sleep at night… Let me know when you run across a tree that grows money though–preferably in nice clean crisp 100 dollar bills.
This is one of those rare instances where i agree with Alasdair, in short Dane you are being an arrogant, pompous, ass and are asserting things that aren’t true. Gravity can be verified via expermentation. As soon as you can take a single celled organism and show it evolving it into, heck i won’t even ask for a human being, how about some sort of multi-cellular organism then you can be taken seriously when you state as unquivocable fact that evolution is Truth(tm). Thats not to say that it MIGHT not be true or mostly true, or that strict creationists MIGHT be wrong. But when you parade around your dogma of evolution as unassailable absolute undeniable 100% truth you set yourself up to be EXACTLY like the fundies who deny evolution and assert creationism as 100% truth. You bitch and moan about people accepting things as absolute truth based on little to no evidence yet when people say “hmm evolution, not sure if i believe that yet” suddenly they are dumb as dirt? No there is one person in this thread who is dumb as dirt, and everyone but him knows who he is.
I didn’t get “Republicans are dumb as dirt” from this poll; instead, I got “Americans are dumb as dirt”. And I don’t think that’s too far off the mark.
My theory on why we appear so “dumb” when it comes to questions like this is that people, even when asked via telephone (even by machine), feel a need to defend their identity, in this case Christian, and agree to things they don’t really believe in because of a need to be “more [blank] than thou”, in this case, more pious. The same behavior happens at football games and computer conventions — who’s the bigger fan, the bigger nerd, whatever. Or, as the case may be with religion, who believes more.
David, minor misunderstanding of what I’m saying. I’m not saying that evolution in it’s present form is 100% correct. All I am saying is that Creationism (as outlined in the Bible) and intelligent design are wrong.
And whilst we are discussing evidence, there is infinitely more evidence to support evolution over creationism. Of course this is just playing with math as there, is, you know, some evidence for it as opposed to creationism for witch there is none, zero, nada, unless we count myths as evidence–something scientists don’t really, you know, do…
Put another way, there is at least a reason to think that evolution might be correct where as creationism is just story people made up before they had the scientific wherewithal to answer the question where did life come from more accurately. Now we have a more accurate answer for that question–and I suspect scientists will centuries to come (likely as long as humans remain alive as a species) continue to refine that answer until such a time that, yes, or present answer to the question will seem sort of out dated–like how Special Relativity made some of Newton a bit out dated. However, that reality doesn’t mean creationism is right. Creationism does not present any evidence in effort to defend itself. To repeat saying that evolution is wrong in no way shape or form makes creationism right.
Humans going back as far as we know have been constantly asking why to a lot of basic questions. Some of these basic questions they did not have the ability to answer. So they made up Gods and stories to answer these questions. Then with time, people developed greater abilities to investigate some questions, so they did. Cultures came into contact with each other, and sometimes the mythological explanation of one culture seemed more apt so that one was adapted, or sometimes a group that you wanted to subjugate so you made your myths come in line with theirs a little more, so that they would become comfortable with your religion and their new overlords (That religion was constantly so malleable, even Christianity in it’s early years, as it was adapted to better attract pagans really puts a damper on that whole divine inspiration thing). Then we got philosophy which went after superstition, but had a hard time really getting down to brass tacks on some issues. So Philosophy slowly gave birth to Science (which now runs away as far as possible from philosophy–this is understandable, as science demands firm answers and philosophy is quite wisshey washy at times these days) Anyway, as philosophers wanted to rigorously test their ideas the developed science and the scientific method. Then overtime science refined it’s ability to answer many basic questions and many times came to loggerheads with the Church and certain religious held beliefs. Notable examples include Copernicus and his theory that the earth was round (of course we now know he was wrong, it is an oblique spheroid–however, him being wrong doesn’t make the Church’s contestation that the Earth is flat right). And of course it took the Religious nuts in the Catholic church until there were photographs from space proving without a doubt that the earth is round to finally admit that perhaps Copernicus wasn’t a heretic for suggesting the Earth was round after all–I think they did that right, some time in the late 1990’s right?
Now, tell me truly, would you really take someone seriously that kept running around saying the earth was flat? I should think not. Well saying that Creationism is right, is just as silly to those of us that demand at least a spec of evidence or logic to accept an idea–and just as worthy of not taking seriously as the Church’s contention that the Earth is flat. So, long story short. No, I don’t take Creationism seriously at all and I think you’d have to be as foolish to believe it as to believe that the earth is flat. But that doesn’t mean that evolution is necessarily correct. This is not really an either or thing, remember the oblique spheroid, there could be a third option, it is surely possible.
Monsignor Mike, I respect your Position but you better leave the Missionaries out of this, Brian Foster has already suggested how their kind of Support actually works to your Detriment ;}.
Now, tell me truly, would you really take someone seriously that kept running around saying the earth was flat? I should think not. Well saying that Creationism is right, is just as silly to those of us that demand at least a spec of evidence or logic to accept an idea–and just as worthy of not taking seriously as the Church’s contention that the Earth is flat.
I’m glad to see you have qualified and clarified your position above Dane, it gives me hope that you can in fact be a party to a reasonable discussion. I don’t think however that was at all how you presented your point up until now.
I do want to address what you are saying here however. Saying Creationism is right is somewhat dissimilar in that a creationist has a ready argument for why there might appear to be evidence to its contrary, i.e. that some higher being placed it there as a test of faith. Yes I would agree with you that such an answer is unlikely to convince anyone who doesn’t allready believe in what the creationist is peddling, and really it provides no room for scientific discourse, but there you are right there hitting the heart of the problem, a creationist does not necessarilly accept science with the same level of trust that you or I or others might. You may think this makes them foolish, and I probably would agree, but arguing with a creationist using fossil evidence and such is not so dissimilar to their using the Bible to argue creationism against you. In order for EITHER source to be convincing in an argument the participants must first agree that it provides an objective source to begin with. I’m not saying they are right, i think strict creationists are in fact wrong, and that science is in no way incompatible with God as they do, but reality all comes down to perception at its most base level and you have to consider that in any argument. There is a limit to what anyone can declare as The Truth, even science, and true science adherents admit that, but far too often and you have demonstrated this here as Alasdair so correctly pointed out, ideas that are probable, even highly likely are tossed around as absolutely True, such that anyone who even begins to question them AT ALL is treated as “dumb as dirt”. Nothing wrong with defending evolution or pointing out the many reasons why you or I think its the most likely answer, but there is a line that you need to be careful of crossing ESPECIALLY when dealing with people who are allready hostile in the first place.
Moving on to your larger point, you seem to assume that the idea of a higher power that operates outside the bounds of what we can comprehend is undoubtedly a figment of imagination, and your hitting a logical fallacy here. Even if we assume for a second that its absolutely true that some or even most, or even ALL of the past and present beliefs in a higher power were made for the sole purpose of explaining things they otherwise couldn’t explain it STILL doesn’t justify an absolute stance that ANY belief in a higher power is based on those same reasons. I’m sorry but science has been both rejected and embraced by religious groups throughout history just like it has with society in general. Relavent to this discussion is Pope John Paul II’s statements in support of evolution. Science as much as you’d like to believe otherwise is completely compatible with faith. Your view of religion is not only very hostile but incredibly dismissive and frankly its hard to take you seriously because of it, in the same way that you find it hard to take a strict creationists view seriously. Both are based on absolutes that are utterly and completely unprovable in any way shape or form. I’m not saying you are out of line for holding the view that religion is what it is, i’m saying you go to far by assumign that its not even possible that you COULD be wrong and their COULD be more to it than what you see.
Its apropos you bring up the flat earth angle, because based on the understanding at the time a flat earth was not an entirely unreaonable view, its not that the people were stupid, they just couldn’t concieve of something more than what they could see. In the same way don’t you think it might be possible that there exist forces beyond your comprehension, forces that science as we know it, human understanding as we know it simply are incapable of explaining? Just because a blind person can’t see colors doesn’t mean that there aren’t any.
Well, our good friend dcl clearly could use some Backup in this lopsided Brawl so I’ve got Bad news: here I am :>.
Yes, Dane’s post was inflammatorily Phrased ~ and still is, even after his commendable & cutesy Briandot Amendment :}, which nicely depoliticizes the Insult by accurately Retargeting it to the Preponderance of All Us Amurr’c'ns.
But the Ferocity of the Dissent here surprises me, at least mildly. For the burden of the Objection is, it seems to me, not so much substantive as it is merely Tactical. The cause of all this Outrage being, the proposition that to push people’s Noses right down into their, uh, Mistakes isn’t necessarily the best way to Incentivize their Correction.
Now this may be true ~ OKOK, doubtless IS true in this instance at least ~ but that doesn’t alter the fact that despite Dane’s hyperbolic rhetorical Shorthand, his underlying point is Also true. And Worrisome.
I must admit I was Shocked (I Tell You :) at the Altitude of those rejectionist percentages re the extremely-well-supported Theory of Natural Selection. Amazing. Troubling. / Come to think of it, maybe Evolution IS wrong ~ at least as represented in the Survey question, namely the notion that “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life…” ;]
All right, so belief in a literalist Creationism does Not equate to lowdown Dirty Dumbness, aka Stupidity. But to me it does imply a kind of Militant Ignorance: a defiant determination Not to Know.
(On the other hand I Do like the substantial chunk of folks who apparently believe in Both: Evolution over the Eons and Creation all in a Flash a mere 10 millenia ago. God Bless America. / And England, where a mere 4.5 Decades ago I heard of a BBC Poll finding that significantly more Britons believed in the existence of Hell than in that of the Devil, implying [the commentator dryly noted] a substantial share who believed in a Hell presided over by somebody Else. :)
I will say that I actually don’t have much of a problem with Alasdair’s formulation, which really only seeks to tack a religious imprimatur on on otherwise scientific explanation. Just let’s not confuse the religion (or if you insist, “faith” or “belief”) with the science.
Slight correction for dcl and David. The idea that Copernicus was trying to disprove, and over which he butted heads with the Church, was Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the universe, not flat-earth belief. The fact that the Earth is spherical is easy to discern by anyone with an even remotely scientific bent of mind, and has been common knowledge among the educated since the Greeks.
I really didn’t want to enter this debate, but this line caught my eye:
And whilst we are discussing evidence, there is infinitely more evidence to support evolution over creationism. Of course this is just playing with math as there, is, you know, some evidence for it as opposed to creationism for witch there is none, zero, nada, unless we count myths as evidence–something scientists don’t really, you know, do…
First, this post conflates the creationism of the origin of the universe with creationism of the origin of human life; I say that because the Intelligent Design movement (which is not “creationist” but compatible with it) addresses origins of life, not origins of the universe. That’s a non-trivial distinction, because there are distinct arguments for each. The post uses the term “creationist” in a derogatory and flippant manner that fails to note that the general use of the term “creationist” comes from “creation” and largely addresses origin of the universe.
Second, creationism does not seek (or, at least, ought not seek) to give a scientific explanation of the origin of life any more than evolutionism gives theological explanations (except, perhaps, in the works of Richard Dawkins). Creationism is NOT a scientific theory. It is an historical narrative of the origins of the universe and the origins of human life. Scientific theory may be compatible or incompatible with that narrative, but it is not, in itself, “science.” Therefore, saying that creationism lacks the scientific proof of evolution is like saying Aristotle lacks the scientific methodology of Newton.
Third, instead, there are religious-based scientific studies of the origins of the universe and the origins of man that are compatible with methodological naturalism and the scientific theory. That’s where movements like Intelligent Design enter. Folks with Ph.D.s, and good scientific research, and their own explanations for the data before them come forward with explanations as to how life could not have originated as evolutionists claim, or, alternatively, how life could not have occurred by chance but must have been the product of design. It’s categorically false to say that there’s “none, zero, nada” when peer-reviewed scientific journals in just the last decade have begun to explore and weigh these scientific claims. It’s true that there’s “none, zero, nada” for creationism; but again, we’re talking an historical narrative, and not a scientific theory.
Fourth, and referring now to the substance of the post, the mere fact that Americans are more likely to demand a higher burden of proof from evolutionists who, like this blog post’s author, reject any notion that there’s even room for discussion of the merits of the scientific debate, only proves the self-perpetuating problems of evolutionists in marketing their message in the last few decades. It’s insisted that the proof for evolution is so airtight, despite the fact that it’s still got many serious gaps and needs tinkering with the occasional archaeological or biological discovery. That type of hostile arrogance has alienated a great many Americans in this supposed “scientific discussion,” which ultimately degenerates into pro-evolutionists decrying any attempt to question any element of their theory, immediately prompting anti-evolutionists to reject even the most plausible and well-documented discoveries as atheistic trickery.
It’s posts like this that force Americans into one camp or another–such as name-calling you “dumb as dirt” for failing to accept every tenet of modern evolutionary synthesis. I, for one, accept many elements of evolutionary theory, including natural selection and microevolution, despite the deplorable self-aggrandizement of those scientists. Just because I don’t think there’s sufficient evidence or adequate explanation for elements of evolutionary theory, such as the failure to find gaps in the fossil record or how distinct species in a macro-evolutionary world exist, doesn’t make be “dumb as dirt.”
The trend on this blog has generally been to have an interesting and thoughtful post, usually by Brendan, followed by comments of decreasing thoughtfulness as they accumulate in the thread. dcl here provides a notable exception.
I believe that the gods created Man from stalks of corn, as revealed to us all by the divine words of the Popol Vuh. If anybody tells me I’m stupid to believe this, that just proves what smarmy assholes they are.
In all seriousness, you aren’t going to prove evolution in a couple of short posts on a blog, and we all know that. Darwin - a creationist until his observations of the natural world made him rethink - needed decades and thousands of pages filled to the brim with example after example, study after study. No, it’s not experimentation, but it does have evidence, which still makes it science. Just as the formation of galaxies is still science, though nobody has ever observed a nebula form completely into a solar system. You want proof of evolution, actually read The Origin of Species.
I’ve seen a number of ID proponents, and all of them showed a dramatic misunderstanding of basic science. One, for example, didn’t know the definition of homology. Another didn’t understand the concept of transition species. Maybe this makes me smug, but that doesn’t put them on the cutting edge of science.
I believe that the gods created Man from stalks of corn, as revealed to us all by the divine words of the Popol Vuh. If anybody tells me I’m stupid to believe this, that just proves what smarmy assholes they are.
Just when you think the thread is turned in the right direction Sean has to come in and once again try and tell all of us who aren’t militant atheists how stupid we are. Bravo Sean, bravo.
I’m still trying to figure out why people are still debating this topic (not the thread, the evolution vs creationism).
In reality, both theories are matters of faith. The creationist view is one taken purely from religious belief; evolution, from scientific observation.
Neither one is objectively provable, really. Evolution can’t become the Law of Evolution through the scientific method. Creationism isn’t going to be “verified” through anything until God tells you in person (and by then, it’s really too late for the rest of us here on Earth).
Why debate it? I am an evangelical Southern Baptist. I believe that God created the Earth, the Universe, and everything in it. I’m not a scientist, but I understand it pretty well for a layperson.
I don’t detest or belittle evolution believers because they don’t believe in Creation by God. I understand the theory of evolution, and from an observability standpoint, it makes sense.
The nature of creation is that it adapts over time, as things change. Over time, we learn new things, make changes to our environment (some good, some bad), and deal with the consequences thereof. Our nature is to use the things we know to start (instinct) and add new data to our knowledge banks as we go. These adaptations start to grow exponentially as add new data, as every new piece of data comes in, it has to be added to the consideration of each new piece, and so on, and so on.
The bottom line is that human beings and all of nature is an amazing thing. Whether it was the result of creation, evolution, or a combination really doesn’t matter at the end of the day.
Unfortunately, the debate is old, tired, and all the lines of discussion have essentially played out already. When you can’t really add new knowledge to the debate the loop dies out. I think that’s where the evolution/creation debate is (much like abortion) now.
Jay, I appreciate your comments. And I think most “evolutionists” would be generally fine to leave “creationists” be if there weren’t some very public battles seeking to establish one over the other when tax dollars are in play…I’d ignore them, but I find teaching of religious principles in public school to be an affront to the Constitution (outside of the obvious classes on religious principles, naturally) and so I will actively oppose anyone who seeks to insert creation theories into high school biology, or the more subtle (and, IMO, devious) use of pseudoscientific explanations. I could care less if you or anyone believes in a strict or loose interpretation of Genesis or Sean’s corn stalk whatever; I only care that publicly funded schools properly teach our kids the leading scientific explanation for the origin of species and its role as a foundational principle in biology–properly taught, of course, would mean a discussion of theory’s current flaws & limitations, by the way, as well as the variety & preponderance of available supporting evidence.
Sadly, scientists have done a piss-poor job informing the general public of the strengths of evolutionary theory, far too few teachers are equipped with the knowledge/money/time/support to properly teach the theory, and far too many would galdly (and, IMO, short-sightedly) thumb their noses at the establishment clause.
Well, Jay, I can only speak as o why I personally debate this topic. Why others do so is beyond my scope of knowledge.
I’m an evolutionary biologist. I spend my time trying to better understand how evolutionary processes work, and using fast growing forms of life (primarily bacteria, but when the questions are suited for them, yeast and viruses are also possible experimental organisms, and even under certain circumstances computer programs can be as well) to test predictions from theory and get a better handle on what patterns emerge when you seed multiple replicate runs with identical starting states and identical experimental conditions. Different projects I’m working on address a large number of separate questions in the field–for instance, projects this month deal with a) the importance of matching the environment in which an organism’s fitness is measured to that in which it has been evolving; b) the differential dynamics of adaptation to extended starvation in two different standard bacterial growth mediums; c) the role of spatial structure in a population’s ability to adapt to a new environment; d) the reliability of an assumption that underlies virtually all of our inferences on degree of relationship between very distantly related forms of life; e) the relative contributions of reversion and compensation in overcoming the costs associated with an adaptation when the driving force of that adaptation is removed (with particular relevance to antibiotic resistance in bacteria); f) the role of interactions between and among genes in adaptation. All are unresolved debates in evolutionary biology, some with obvious applications and some which are only of academic interest at the moment.
In order to study these things, and learn from/about them, I need funding. My personal salary is taken care of by the fellowship my university gave me, though I could also be working as a teaching assistant and getting my salary that way. But my salary is actually only a small fraction of what it costs to have me doing this research. We need to buy the nutrients for the bacteria to consume, the dyes used to tell them apart, the pipet tips used for propagating cultures and diluting them enough to enumerate, the chemicals needed to sequence genes which we suspect have changed, etc., along with the funding to pay for the water, steam, natural gas, electricity, etc that power our equipment. The major source of funding for basic science research is the federal government, predominantly the NSF and the NIH, because although scientific progress depends heavily on basic (as opposed to applied) research, basic research is too risky for it to be economically feasible for almost any biotech corporation.
In order to get that funding, then, Congress needs to budget money for these organizations to fund research. And that is part of why it’s important for me to communicate the difference between theory and speculation. And, further, to stress the differences between science and faith. When the public as a whole gets too hostile to evolutionary biology, my funding dries up even if scientists who aren’t evolutionary biologists still think that my research should be funded.
I know that a lot of people who aren’t scientists like to look at evolutionary theory and call it a matter of faith, but in reality, it’s not. Evolutionary theory provides a wealth of specific, testable predictions about how organisms will respond to different selective pressures. Alternative hypotheses encompassed in the body of work can be distinguished by well-devised experiments, with incorrect hypotheses being discarded, or being modified when presented with conflicting data (though proper modification requires that they now predict something else which hasn’t been tested yet, or else you’re simply creating just-so stories).
There is indeed an historical context to evolution, with an N=1 of what has happened so far. But that doesn’t mean that it’s an act of faith to make an argument that the processes which occur in the present are a sufficient explanation for how things operated in the past. Many people who couch their objections to scientific interpretations of how humanity evolved in the language that it was a one-shot event which no human alive today was around to witness don’t bat an eye at scientific explanations of how mountain ranges arose continents drifted, despite those also being one-shot events in the distant past which we understand primarily by taking the set of forces we can observe in the present and projecting them back into the past. Evolution gets held to a different level of scrutiny by the general public than virtually any other form of science.
Fundamentally, I suspect that what a lot of those who object to the notion of science seeking out an underlying reality don’t recognize is that the scientific process seeks to find sufficient explanations for how things occur; it rarely seeks to state with an absolutely certainty how a particular event did occur. I can very easily cause a population of bacteria to adapt to either use a sugar they couldn’t previously use, or lose the ability to use a sugar that they could previously use; I do this frequently to be able to mark my strains to be able to easily tell them apart. I can give a sufficient explanation for how this happens using entirely naturalistic phenomena. I can’t, on the other hand, rule out the possibility of a divine plan guiding this process. Whether or not there is one is immaterial to what I am trying to understand, and a God which intervenes in specified, predictable ways is effectively indistinguishable from a naturalistic phenomenon. But whether or not there is that divine intervention, I’ve still gained the knowledge that if I want to get E. coli who can use arabinose from a population of them which cannot, all I need to do is grow a culture to a high density and tranfer to an agar plate where the sole carbon source is arabinose, and pick cells from the few colonies which manage to grow.
What I can’t state with absolute certainty is whether God is guiding Dr. Mike’s process, or Dr. Mike is guiding God’s. ;}
“… a God which intervenes in specified, predictable ways is effectively indistinguishable from a naturalistic phenomenon.”
I have long had the sneaking suspicion that God is somehow both (a) God AND also, (b) a Naturalistic Phenomenon. / Why should He not be? Why WOULD he Not be? / And who the hell do we think we are to instruct Him that “our” rules & definitions & categories & “understandings” don’t allow Him to be Both?
Thank you, Mike. Excellent as always. May your Funding Flourish. (Also your arabinoseophile E. coli :) (though why you want to grow germs with little arab noses I’ll Never know ;)
“…projects this month deal with…b) the differential dynamics of adaptation to extended starvation in two different standard bacterial growth mediums…”
Hey, stoppit, that’s Cruel. You’re going to be hearing from People for the Ethical Treatment of Microorganisms. :]
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June 19th, 2007 at 1:47:38 pm
Directly from the linked article (emphasis added):
“Independents and Democrats are more likely than Republicans to believe in the theory of evolution. But even among non-Republicans there appears to be a significant minority who doubt that evolution adequately explains where humans came from.“
June 19th, 2007 at 1:50:21 pm
I will simply provide these two quotes from the article:
1) But even among non-Republicans there appears to be a significant minority who doubt that evolution adequately explains where humans came from.
2)The theory of evolution as an explanation for the origin and development of life has been controversial for centuries, … Although many scientists accept evolution as the best theoretical explanation for diversity in forms of life on Earth, the issue of its validity has risen again…
June 19th, 2007 at 1:53:21 pm
Insulting them will definitely change their minds. Good call, dcl.
This is one of those needlessly inflammatory posts where I wish the byline was in flashing red text, so casual readers won’t mistakenly think that I wrote it. Andrew’s “Why hire blacks when we can get Mexicans cheaper?” being the archetypal example.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:03:54 pm
Yes, gahrie, and I stay up late at night worrying about Newton’s Theory of Gravitation too… Please come back when you know what words mean in a scientific context–or were you just attempting to prove my point for me? If that’s the case, then thank you.
And Brendan, at least I kept the needlessly inflammatory part out of the headline and confined it to the, admittedly extremely short, article.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:07:57 pm
You still do those of us in science a disservice with this needlessly inflammatory rhetoric, Dane.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:13:14 pm
Immediately after reading the text of this post, I knew that Brendan had not written it. It’s insulting, condescending, and unfair … Congratulations, dcl, for bolstering your reputation for being an ass.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:18:13 pm
I thought it was funny… although I can see that it’s also insulting.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:20:30 pm
Mike, I just think that it does everyone a disservice to not actually tell them that their holding onto a false belief–and that treating that belief with kid gloves, even when demonstrably wrong, only encourages them to hang onto it longer. Instead I think we need to encourage people to come out of the cave of stupidity and engage with reality and jettison their superstitious lunacy.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:21:35 pm
In partial defense of dcl, the Gallup story’s headline unnecessarily calls attention to the partisan data, when arguably the most intriguing or newsworthy point is the significant number of Americans who claim to believe in evolution and creation simultaneously, even when the questions are worded in such a way as to make them very nearly mutually exclusive concepts. That’s your story — but Gallup sadly and predictably took the easy partisan swipe.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:23:48 pm
“I just think that it does everyone a disservice to not actually tell them that their holding onto a false belief”
Interestingly, this is also what Christian missionaries think. Not to mention Islamic jihadists.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:27:41 pm
Aren’t you an anti-idiotarian, Brendan? What do you call those who refuse to accept reality, if not idiots?
Seriously, to those concerned about offending the feelings of the stupid, how do you deal with them when logic and facts have failed repeatedly?
June 19th, 2007 at 2:28:55 pm
Vicki, it is only insulting to a self selecting sub set of people, and about them, it is simply accurate. I disapprove of mean or insulting jokes about non-self selecting groups (blonds for example) but don’t have a problem with those based on self selecting characteristics, like being a UCLA Bruin or, as in this case, holding silly superstitious beliefs that are demonstrably wrong–no one is born believing in creationism, they have it drilled into their heads by (Okay, this particular joke would be kind of a cheep shot).
June 19th, 2007 at 2:34:59 pm
Yes, gahrie, and I stay up late at night worrying about Newton’s Theory of Gravitation too…
http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/19/6/5/1
June 19th, 2007 at 2:39:55 pm
Oh..and to save needless ad hominen:
I am a deist, and I believe that man is the product of planned evolution…
I just object to false certainty, sanctimony and needless ad hominen.
June 19th, 2007 at 2:51:18 pm
Dane, by your own argument, those who hold these beliefs are holding onto a false belief, not relying on reason. (I am *not* arguing that myself, but pointing out your argument). Do you actually fail to understand that by being condescending, dismissive, and needlessly inflammatory (and, I’ll put it bluntly, in my view immature and sophomoric), you are more likely to cause the argument to revolve on emotional grounds, rather than reason? Belief in a higher power and some sort of divine plan is a great comfort for many people, and something which makes them feel more emotionally secure. Appealing to emotion in an argument against comforting beliefs is highly unlikely to get you anywhere.
You feel that someone’s belief in a divine guidance of evolution is a silly superstition and obviously contrary to reality. That’s fine; you can have your beliefs, the Onion’s recent survey notwithstanding. But by claiming that your view is self-evidentially true and thus those who hold opposite views can be dismissive as laughable fools despite being roughly half of the general population, you are likely to alienate many and make life that much more difficult for those of us who actually have to deal with these beliefs in our professional careers. At times like this, I often wish I didn’t have the “support” of individuals like you, as that support actually works to my detriment.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:00:21 pm
DCL, I hate to be petty, but it’s actually a law of gravity these days.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:02:20 pm
Dane, I think it is funny, you think it is funny, but the reaction you’re getting is clearly that it is insulting to more than just a sub set of people… Unless you think Brendan and Mike are part of that group…
.
gahrie, please forgive me if you’ve discussed this before on the blog, but I’m curious as to what your personal belief is. How would you rate the statement “Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years”? I’m asking because I really do find it disturbing that 66% of Americans (according to this poll) think the statement is true.
(I’m asking sincerely, and I really do want to hear your point of view)
June 19th, 2007 at 3:04:39 pm
gahrie, I guess you already answered my question… I hadn’t refreshed my page before i posted.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:11:31 pm
ok, sorry for the 3 posts in a row, but…
Mike just set my computer on fire.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:21:55 pm
Well no, apparently according to gahrie and his mentioned physics article, gravity might very potentially be wrong, based on proposed and repeatable experimentation vis-a-vi dark matter.
And Mike, it is not the bloody Onion, it’s a Gallup Poll–hmm, speaking of which I seem to have made a typo, need to fix that.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:34:27 pm
I don’t think Mike said he was insulted by it, just that he found it annoying and sophomoric. I still think he is wrong, but his position on the matter is quite defensible. I think part of the reason the number of people that say yes to the Man created as is 10,000 years ago question is due in part to the fact that reporters in this country treat the idea with kid gloves and the scientists they interview are unwilling to tell the creationist being interviewed at the same time that they are just out and out wrong and that absolutely nothing supports their position. In Europe the media tends to be much tougher on this particular brand of silliness, find it rather laughable that we Americans are actually even still discussing the issue and this attitude seems to correlate to a much lower rate of this particular brand of silliness.
Of course causation does not equal correlation (nor correlation causation if you prefer), but I don’t see any particular reason not to say this is just foolish… If a child went around saying that money grew on trees would it be better to tell him the idea is wrong or agree to disagree based on your position that money does not grow on trees but, nevertheless, his position and opinion certainly should be accorded a position of equality in the debate and that, indeed it might well be an open question as to weather or not money grows on trees. I’m sorry but the latter just seems like a dumb corse of action.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:38:34 pm
Dane, I’m aware that you’re citing a Gallup poll. The onion article I referred to was this one, linked by Brendan back in late May.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:41:41 pm
ahh, well you should have said so, that’s a horse of a different color. Of course the article is wrong, if the Gallup numbers are to be trusted it is closer to 60% of the population that is not entitled to their opinion.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:49:26 pm
Hey - if Dane wants to “believe the theory of evolution is true “ {my emphasis}, then who are we to make fun of him … the scientific-minded amongst us accept the Theory of Evolution as a plausibe model - but stop short of having it as an item of belief …
Personally, I like to think that the Creator could well have used Darwinian Selection as the Creator’s Method of Choice to create the various species … I find it to be just as plausible as the Theory of Evolution …
June 19th, 2007 at 4:07:29 pm
hey, you know if that helps you sleep at night… Let me know when you run across a tree that grows money though–preferably in nice clean crisp 100 dollar bills.
June 19th, 2007 at 4:24:14 pm
This is one of those rare instances where i agree with Alasdair, in short Dane you are being an arrogant, pompous, ass and are asserting things that aren’t true. Gravity can be verified via expermentation. As soon as you can take a single celled organism and show it evolving it into, heck i won’t even ask for a human being, how about some sort of multi-cellular organism then you can be taken seriously when you state as unquivocable fact that evolution is Truth(tm). Thats not to say that it MIGHT not be true or mostly true, or that strict creationists MIGHT be wrong. But when you parade around your dogma of evolution as unassailable absolute undeniable 100% truth you set yourself up to be EXACTLY like the fundies who deny evolution and assert creationism as 100% truth. You bitch and moan about people accepting things as absolute truth based on little to no evidence yet when people say “hmm evolution, not sure if i believe that yet” suddenly they are dumb as dirt? No there is one person in this thread who is dumb as dirt, and everyone but him knows who he is.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:24:23 pm
I didn’t get “Republicans are dumb as dirt” from this poll; instead, I got “Americans are dumb as dirt”. And I don’t think that’s too far off the mark.
My theory on why we appear so “dumb” when it comes to questions like this is that people, even when asked via telephone (even by machine), feel a need to defend their identity, in this case Christian, and agree to things they don’t really believe in because of a need to be “more [blank] than thou”, in this case, more pious. The same behavior happens at football games and computer conventions — who’s the bigger fan, the bigger nerd, whatever. Or, as the case may be with religion, who believes more.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:24:47 pm
David, minor misunderstanding of what I’m saying. I’m not saying that evolution in it’s present form is 100% correct. All I am saying is that Creationism (as outlined in the Bible) and intelligent design are wrong.
And whilst we are discussing evidence, there is infinitely more evidence to support evolution over creationism. Of course this is just playing with math as there, is, you know, some evidence for it as opposed to creationism for witch there is none, zero, nada, unless we count myths as evidence–something scientists don’t really, you know, do…
Put another way, there is at least a reason to think that evolution might be correct where as creationism is just story people made up before they had the scientific wherewithal to answer the question where did life come from more accurately. Now we have a more accurate answer for that question–and I suspect scientists will centuries to come (likely as long as humans remain alive as a species) continue to refine that answer until such a time that, yes, or present answer to the question will seem sort of out dated–like how Special Relativity made some of Newton a bit out dated. However, that reality doesn’t mean creationism is right. Creationism does not present any evidence in effort to defend itself. To repeat saying that evolution is wrong in no way shape or form makes creationism right.
Humans going back as far as we know have been constantly asking why to a lot of basic questions. Some of these basic questions they did not have the ability to answer. So they made up Gods and stories to answer these questions. Then with time, people developed greater abilities to investigate some questions, so they did. Cultures came into contact with each other, and sometimes the mythological explanation of one culture seemed more apt so that one was adapted, or sometimes a group that you wanted to subjugate so you made your myths come in line with theirs a little more, so that they would become comfortable with your religion and their new overlords (That religion was constantly so malleable, even Christianity in it’s early years, as it was adapted to better attract pagans really puts a damper on that whole divine inspiration thing). Then we got philosophy which went after superstition, but had a hard time really getting down to brass tacks on some issues. So Philosophy slowly gave birth to Science (which now runs away as far as possible from philosophy–this is understandable, as science demands firm answers and philosophy is quite wisshey washy at times these days) Anyway, as philosophers wanted to rigorously test their ideas the developed science and the scientific method. Then overtime science refined it’s ability to answer many basic questions and many times came to loggerheads with the Church and certain religious held beliefs. Notable examples include Copernicus and his theory that the earth was round (of course we now know he was wrong, it is an oblique spheroid–however, him being wrong doesn’t make the Church’s contestation that the Earth is flat right). And of course it took the Religious nuts in the Catholic church until there were photographs from space proving without a doubt that the earth is round to finally admit that perhaps Copernicus wasn’t a heretic for suggesting the Earth was round after all–I think they did that right, some time in the late 1990’s right?
Now, tell me truly, would you really take someone seriously that kept running around saying the earth was flat? I should think not. Well saying that Creationism is right, is just as silly to those of us that demand at least a spec of evidence or logic to accept an idea–and just as worthy of not taking seriously as the Church’s contention that the Earth is flat. So, long story short. No, I don’t take Creationism seriously at all and I think you’d have to be as foolish to believe it as to believe that the earth is flat. But that doesn’t mean that evolution is necessarily correct. This is not really an either or thing, remember the oblique spheroid, there could be a third option, it is surely possible.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:26:25 pm
Briandot might be on to something, I think I shall amend this article accordingly.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:38:55 pm
The term Dane means is oblate
June 19th, 2007 at 6:09:15 pm
Monsignor Mike, I respect your Position but you better leave the Missionaries out of this, Brian Foster has already suggested how their kind of Support actually works to your Detriment ;}.
June 19th, 2007 at 6:20:30 pm
So the Flat-Earthers and the Round-Earthers are both correct, Mike … Flat as the poles and Round at the Equator …
Is that not an excellent example of a politically-corect compromise ? (grin)
Since we are discussing irrational belief systems, has Global Warming taken any more hits recently ?
June 19th, 2007 at 6:44:29 pm
Now, tell me truly, would you really take someone seriously that kept running around saying the earth was flat? I should think not. Well saying that Creationism is right, is just as silly to those of us that demand at least a spec of evidence or logic to accept an idea–and just as worthy of not taking seriously as the Church’s contention that the Earth is flat.
I’m glad to see you have qualified and clarified your position above Dane, it gives me hope that you can in fact be a party to a reasonable discussion. I don’t think however that was at all how you presented your point up until now.
I do want to address what you are saying here however. Saying Creationism is right is somewhat dissimilar in that a creationist has a ready argument for why there might appear to be evidence to its contrary, i.e. that some higher being placed it there as a test of faith. Yes I would agree with you that such an answer is unlikely to convince anyone who doesn’t allready believe in what the creationist is peddling, and really it provides no room for scientific discourse, but there you are right there hitting the heart of the problem, a creationist does not necessarilly accept science with the same level of trust that you or I or others might. You may think this makes them foolish, and I probably would agree, but arguing with a creationist using fossil evidence and such is not so dissimilar to their using the Bible to argue creationism against you. In order for EITHER source to be convincing in an argument the participants must first agree that it provides an objective source to begin with. I’m not saying they are right, i think strict creationists are in fact wrong, and that science is in no way incompatible with God as they do, but reality all comes down to perception at its most base level and you have to consider that in any argument. There is a limit to what anyone can declare as The Truth, even science, and true science adherents admit that, but far too often and you have demonstrated this here as Alasdair so correctly pointed out, ideas that are probable, even highly likely are tossed around as absolutely True, such that anyone who even begins to question them AT ALL is treated as “dumb as dirt”. Nothing wrong with defending evolution or pointing out the many reasons why you or I think its the most likely answer, but there is a line that you need to be careful of crossing ESPECIALLY when dealing with people who are allready hostile in the first place.
Moving on to your larger point, you seem to assume that the idea of a higher power that operates outside the bounds of what we can comprehend is undoubtedly a figment of imagination, and your hitting a logical fallacy here. Even if we assume for a second that its absolutely true that some or even most, or even ALL of the past and present beliefs in a higher power were made for the sole purpose of explaining things they otherwise couldn’t explain it STILL doesn’t justify an absolute stance that ANY belief in a higher power is based on those same reasons. I’m sorry but science has been both rejected and embraced by religious groups throughout history just like it has with society in general. Relavent to this discussion is Pope John Paul II’s statements in support of evolution. Science as much as you’d like to believe otherwise is completely compatible with faith. Your view of religion is not only very hostile but incredibly dismissive and frankly its hard to take you seriously because of it, in the same way that you find it hard to take a strict creationists view seriously. Both are based on absolutes that are utterly and completely unprovable in any way shape or form. I’m not saying you are out of line for holding the view that religion is what it is, i’m saying you go to far by assumign that its not even possible that you COULD be wrong and their COULD be more to it than what you see.
Its apropos you bring up the flat earth angle, because based on the understanding at the time a flat earth was not an entirely unreaonable view, its not that the people were stupid, they just couldn’t concieve of something more than what they could see. In the same way don’t you think it might be possible that there exist forces beyond your comprehension, forces that science as we know it, human understanding as we know it simply are incapable of explaining? Just because a blind person can’t see colors doesn’t mean that there aren’t any.
June 19th, 2007 at 7:00:34 pm
Well, our good friend dcl clearly could use some Backup in this lopsided Brawl so I’ve got Bad news: here I am :>.
Yes, Dane’s post was inflammatorily Phrased ~ and still is, even after his commendable & cutesy Briandot Amendment :}, which nicely depoliticizes the Insult by accurately Retargeting it to the Preponderance of All Us Amurr’c'ns.
But the Ferocity of the Dissent here surprises me, at least mildly. For the burden of the Objection is, it seems to me, not so much substantive as it is merely Tactical. The cause of all this Outrage being, the proposition that to push people’s Noses right down into their, uh, Mistakes isn’t necessarily the best way to Incentivize their Correction.
Now this may be true ~ OKOK, doubtless IS true in this instance at least ~ but that doesn’t alter the fact that despite Dane’s hyperbolic rhetorical Shorthand, his underlying point is Also true. And Worrisome.
I must admit I was Shocked (I Tell You :) at the Altitude of those rejectionist percentages re the extremely-well-supported Theory of Natural Selection. Amazing. Troubling. / Come to think of it, maybe Evolution IS wrong ~ at least as represented in the Survey question, namely the notion that “Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life…” ;]
All right, so belief in a literalist Creationism does Not equate to lowdown Dirty Dumbness, aka Stupidity. But to me it does imply a kind of Militant Ignorance: a defiant determination Not to Know.
(On the other hand I Do like the substantial chunk of folks who apparently believe in Both: Evolution over the Eons and Creation all in a Flash a mere 10 millenia ago. God Bless America. / And England, where a mere 4.5 Decades ago I heard of a BBC Poll finding that significantly more Britons believed in the existence of Hell than in that of the Devil, implying [the commentator dryly noted] a substantial share who believed in a Hell presided over by somebody Else. :)
June 19th, 2007 at 7:14:41 pm
Brendan, what criteria do you use when evaluating whether or not someone should be able to guest post on your blog? :D
June 19th, 2007 at 7:28:09 pm
Well said Joe Loy.
I will say that I actually don’t have much of a problem with Alasdair’s formulation, which really only seeks to tack a religious imprimatur on on otherwise scientific explanation. Just let’s not confuse the religion (or if you insist, “faith” or “belief”) with the science.
Slight correction for dcl and David. The idea that Copernicus was trying to disprove, and over which he butted heads with the Church, was Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the universe, not flat-earth belief. The fact that the Earth is spherical is easy to discern by anyone with an even remotely scientific bent of mind, and has been common knowledge among the educated since the Greeks.
June 19th, 2007 at 8:59:04 pm
I really didn’t want to enter this debate, but this line caught my eye:
First, this post conflates the creationism of the origin of the universe with creationism of the origin of human life; I say that because the Intelligent Design movement (which is not “creationist” but compatible with it) addresses origins of life, not origins of the universe. That’s a non-trivial distinction, because there are distinct arguments for each. The post uses the term “creationist” in a derogatory and flippant manner that fails to note that the general use of the term “creationist” comes from “creation” and largely addresses origin of the universe.
Second, creationism does not seek (or, at least, ought not seek) to give a scientific explanation of the origin of life any more than evolutionism gives theological explanations (except, perhaps, in the works of Richard Dawkins). Creationism is NOT a scientific theory. It is an historical narrative of the origins of the universe and the origins of human life. Scientific theory may be compatible or incompatible with that narrative, but it is not, in itself, “science.” Therefore, saying that creationism lacks the scientific proof of evolution is like saying Aristotle lacks the scientific methodology of Newton.
Third, instead, there are religious-based scientific studies of the origins of the universe and the origins of man that are compatible with methodological naturalism and the scientific theory. That’s where movements like Intelligent Design enter. Folks with Ph.D.s, and good scientific research, and their own explanations for the data before them come forward with explanations as to how life could not have originated as evolutionists claim, or, alternatively, how life could not have occurred by chance but must have been the product of design. It’s categorically false to say that there’s “none, zero, nada” when peer-reviewed scientific journals in just the last decade have begun to explore and weigh these scientific claims. It’s true that there’s “none, zero, nada” for creationism; but again, we’re talking an historical narrative, and not a scientific theory.
Fourth, and referring now to the substance of the post, the mere fact that Americans are more likely to demand a higher burden of proof from evolutionists who, like this blog post’s author, reject any notion that there’s even room for discussion of the merits of the scientific debate, only proves the self-perpetuating problems of evolutionists in marketing their message in the last few decades. It’s insisted that the proof for evolution is so airtight, despite the fact that it’s still got many serious gaps and needs tinkering with the occasional archaeological or biological discovery. That type of hostile arrogance has alienated a great many Americans in this supposed “scientific discussion,” which ultimately degenerates into pro-evolutionists decrying any attempt to question any element of their theory, immediately prompting anti-evolutionists to reject even the most plausible and well-documented discoveries as atheistic trickery.
It’s posts like this that force Americans into one camp or another–such as name-calling you “dumb as dirt” for failing to accept every tenet of modern evolutionary synthesis. I, for one, accept many elements of evolutionary theory, including natural selection and microevolution, despite the deplorable self-aggrandizement of those scientists. Just because I don’t think there’s sufficient evidence or adequate explanation for elements of evolutionary theory, such as the failure to find gaps in the fossil record or how distinct species in a macro-evolutionary world exist, doesn’t make be “dumb as dirt.”
June 19th, 2007 at 9:31:01 pm
Thats Great!, Funny, I can’t believe how upset people get.
June 19th, 2007 at 9:33:44 pm
Freaking great.
June 19th, 2007 at 9:37:57 pm
David, I would not argue with your most recent post. Nor Loy the Elder’s.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:10:06 pm
[…] Brendan Loy […]
June 19th, 2007 at 11:24:29 pm
The trend on this blog has generally been to have an interesting and thoughtful post, usually by Brendan, followed by comments of decreasing thoughtfulness as they accumulate in the thread. dcl here provides a notable exception.
June 20th, 2007 at 12:29:30 am
And a recent posting on Brendanloy.com reveals:
Dane is a smug asshole.
June 20th, 2007 at 9:58:17 am
I believe that the gods created Man from stalks of corn, as revealed to us all by the divine words of the Popol Vuh. If anybody tells me I’m stupid to believe this, that just proves what smarmy assholes they are.
June 20th, 2007 at 10:06:28 am
In all seriousness, you aren’t going to prove evolution in a couple of short posts on a blog, and we all know that. Darwin - a creationist until his observations of the natural world made him rethink - needed decades and thousands of pages filled to the brim with example after example, study after study. No, it’s not experimentation, but it does have evidence, which still makes it science. Just as the formation of galaxies is still science, though nobody has ever observed a nebula form completely into a solar system. You want proof of evolution, actually read The Origin of Species.
I’ve seen a number of ID proponents, and all of them showed a dramatic misunderstanding of basic science. One, for example, didn’t know the definition of homology. Another didn’t understand the concept of transition species. Maybe this makes me smug, but that doesn’t put them on the cutting edge of science.
June 20th, 2007 at 10:11:21 am
Well, at least Joe Mama has insure that it’s not going the other way round either.
June 20th, 2007 at 12:58:56 pm
I believe that the gods created Man from stalks of corn, as revealed to us all by the divine words of the Popol Vuh. If anybody tells me I’m stupid to believe this, that just proves what smarmy assholes they are.
Just when you think the thread is turned in the right direction Sean has to come in and once again try and tell all of us who aren’t militant atheists how stupid we are. Bravo Sean, bravo.
June 20th, 2007 at 2:10:48 pm
I’m still trying to figure out why people are still debating this topic (not the thread, the evolution vs creationism).
In reality, both theories are matters of faith. The creationist view is one taken purely from religious belief; evolution, from scientific observation.
Neither one is objectively provable, really. Evolution can’t become the Law of Evolution through the scientific method. Creationism isn’t going to be “verified” through anything until God tells you in person (and by then, it’s really too late for the rest of us here on Earth).
Why debate it? I am an evangelical Southern Baptist. I believe that God created the Earth, the Universe, and everything in it. I’m not a scientist, but I understand it pretty well for a layperson.
I don’t detest or belittle evolution believers because they don’t believe in Creation by God. I understand the theory of evolution, and from an observability standpoint, it makes sense.
The nature of creation is that it adapts over time, as things change. Over time, we learn new things, make changes to our environment (some good, some bad), and deal with the consequences thereof. Our nature is to use the things we know to start (instinct) and add new data to our knowledge banks as we go. These adaptations start to grow exponentially as add new data, as every new piece of data comes in, it has to be added to the consideration of each new piece, and so on, and so on.
The bottom line is that human beings and all of nature is an amazing thing. Whether it was the result of creation, evolution, or a combination really doesn’t matter at the end of the day.
Unfortunately, the debate is old, tired, and all the lines of discussion have essentially played out already. When you can’t really add new knowledge to the debate the loop dies out. I think that’s where the evolution/creation debate is (much like abortion) now.
June 20th, 2007 at 2:41:56 pm
Jay, I appreciate your comments. And I think most “evolutionists” would be generally fine to leave “creationists” be if there weren’t some very public battles seeking to establish one over the other when tax dollars are in play…I’d ignore them, but I find teaching of religious principles in public school to be an affront to the Constitution (outside of the obvious classes on religious principles, naturally) and so I will actively oppose anyone who seeks to insert creation theories into high school biology, or the more subtle (and, IMO, devious) use of pseudoscientific explanations. I could care less if you or anyone believes in a strict or loose interpretation of Genesis or Sean’s corn stalk whatever; I only care that publicly funded schools properly teach our kids the leading scientific explanation for the origin of species and its role as a foundational principle in biology–properly taught, of course, would mean a discussion of theory’s current flaws & limitations, by the way, as well as the variety & preponderance of available supporting evidence.
Sadly, scientists have done a piss-poor job informing the general public of the strengths of evolutionary theory, far too few teachers are equipped with the knowledge/money/time/support to properly teach the theory, and far too many would galdly (and, IMO, short-sightedly) thumb their noses at the establishment clause.
June 20th, 2007 at 3:17:41 pm
Well, Jay, I can only speak as o why I personally debate this topic. Why others do so is beyond my scope of knowledge.
I’m an evolutionary biologist. I spend my time trying to better understand how evolutionary processes work, and using fast growing forms of life (primarily bacteria, but when the questions are suited for them, yeast and viruses are also possible experimental organisms, and even under certain circumstances computer programs can be as well) to test predictions from theory and get a better handle on what patterns emerge when you seed multiple replicate runs with identical starting states and identical experimental conditions. Different projects I’m working on address a large number of separate questions in the field–for instance, projects this month deal with a) the importance of matching the environment in which an organism’s fitness is measured to that in which it has been evolving; b) the differential dynamics of adaptation to extended starvation in two different standard bacterial growth mediums; c) the role of spatial structure in a population’s ability to adapt to a new environment; d) the reliability of an assumption that underlies virtually all of our inferences on degree of relationship between very distantly related forms of life; e) the relative contributions of reversion and compensation in overcoming the costs associated with an adaptation when the driving force of that adaptation is removed (with particular relevance to antibiotic resistance in bacteria); f) the role of interactions between and among genes in adaptation. All are unresolved debates in evolutionary biology, some with obvious applications and some which are only of academic interest at the moment.
In order to study these things, and learn from/about them, I need funding. My personal salary is taken care of by the fellowship my university gave me, though I could also be working as a teaching assistant and getting my salary that way. But my salary is actually only a small fraction of what it costs to have me doing this research. We need to buy the nutrients for the bacteria to consume, the dyes used to tell them apart, the pipet tips used for propagating cultures and diluting them enough to enumerate, the chemicals needed to sequence genes which we suspect have changed, etc., along with the funding to pay for the water, steam, natural gas, electricity, etc that power our equipment. The major source of funding for basic science research is the federal government, predominantly the NSF and the NIH, because although scientific progress depends heavily on basic (as opposed to applied) research, basic research is too risky for it to be economically feasible for almost any biotech corporation.
In order to get that funding, then, Congress needs to budget money for these organizations to fund research. And that is part of why it’s important for me to communicate the difference between theory and speculation. And, further, to stress the differences between science and faith. When the public as a whole gets too hostile to evolutionary biology, my funding dries up even if scientists who aren’t evolutionary biologists still think that my research should be funded.
I know that a lot of people who aren’t scientists like to look at evolutionary theory and call it a matter of faith, but in reality, it’s not. Evolutionary theory provides a wealth of specific, testable predictions about how organisms will respond to different selective pressures. Alternative hypotheses encompassed in the body of work can be distinguished by well-devised experiments, with incorrect hypotheses being discarded, or being modified when presented with conflicting data (though proper modification requires that they now predict something else which hasn’t been tested yet, or else you’re simply creating just-so stories).
There is indeed an historical context to evolution, with an N=1 of what has happened so far. But that doesn’t mean that it’s an act of faith to make an argument that the processes which occur in the present are a sufficient explanation for how things operated in the past. Many people who couch their objections to scientific interpretations of how humanity evolved in the language that it was a one-shot event which no human alive today was around to witness don’t bat an eye at scientific explanations of how mountain ranges arose continents drifted, despite those also being one-shot events in the distant past which we understand primarily by taking the set of forces we can observe in the present and projecting them back into the past. Evolution gets held to a different level of scrutiny by the general public than virtually any other form of science.
Fundamentally, I suspect that what a lot of those who object to the notion of science seeking out an underlying reality don’t recognize is that the scientific process seeks to find sufficient explanations for how things occur; it rarely seeks to state with an absolutely certainty how a particular event did occur. I can very easily cause a population of bacteria to adapt to either use a sugar they couldn’t previously use, or lose the ability to use a sugar that they could previously use; I do this frequently to be able to mark my strains to be able to easily tell them apart. I can give a sufficient explanation for how this happens using entirely naturalistic phenomena. I can’t, on the other hand, rule out the possibility of a divine plan guiding this process. Whether or not there is one is immaterial to what I am trying to understand, and a God which intervenes in specified, predictable ways is effectively indistinguishable from a naturalistic phenomenon. But whether or not there is that divine intervention, I’ve still gained the knowledge that if I want to get E. coli who can use arabinose from a population of them which cannot, all I need to do is grow a culture to a high density and tranfer to an agar plate where the sole carbon source is arabinose, and pick cells from the few colonies which manage to grow.
June 21st, 2007 at 11:03:00 am
What I can’t state with absolute certainty is whether God is guiding Dr. Mike’s process, or Dr. Mike is guiding God’s. ;}
“… a God which intervenes in specified, predictable ways is effectively indistinguishable from a naturalistic phenomenon.”
I have long had the sneaking suspicion that God is somehow both (a) God AND also, (b) a Naturalistic Phenomenon. / Why should He not be? Why WOULD he Not be? / And who the hell do we think we are to instruct Him that “our” rules & definitions & categories & “understandings” don’t allow Him to be Both?
Thank you, Mike. Excellent as always. May your Funding Flourish. (Also your arabinoseophile E. coli :) (though why you want to grow germs with little arab noses I’ll Never know ;)
“…projects this month deal with…b) the differential dynamics of adaptation to extended starvation in two different standard bacterial growth mediums…”
Hey, stoppit, that’s Cruel. You’re going to be hearing from People for the Ethical Treatment of Microorganisms. :]