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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Death of Darwinism
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Traveller
Shipmate
# 1943
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tiffer:
Yes I agree, I am glad Hawkins stood up for what he thought was true,
I worry about people who produce a long post and miss the earlier, simple correction. Laura pointed out correctly that he is Stephen Hawking , not Hawkins. (I have a personal interest, as it were ![[Razz]](tongue.gif) )
IIRC, the doctrine he "recanted" was about expanding and collapsing universes and whether they "bounce" to produce another Big Bang. Hardly everday science, very much pushing the envelope on advanced speculation on very theoritical ideas. Stephen Hawking would be the first to admit that good science makes predictions which can be tested to verify the theory, and it is a bit difficult to test that one! Apologies to Laura that I can't find the exact reference, I have checked the four SH books in our library and can't find it in any of them ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
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I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live:
I will praise my God while I have my being.
Psalm 104 v.33
Posts: 1037 | From: Wherever the car has stopped at the moment! | Registered: Dec 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tiffer:
Yes I agree, I am glad Hawkins stood up for what he thought was true, I think I would have just let everyone go on believing what I thought was wrong.
But, this being science and all, and done above-board and in public (if its kept secret its not really proper science in my opinion that I borrowed from Whit Diffie) someone else would have noticed sooner or later. Thats how science works.
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Ken when I said back when people were frightened of scientists I meant more centuries ago, when they used to torture people for saying the world was round etc.
Oh? Did they torture people for saying the world was round? Who got tortured? And who did the torturing? Can you think of one example? I think not.
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The majority of western people believe in evolution, and yet I am yet to hear someone give me a really good explanation of how it really works in practice.
There are at least half a dozen on this very thread. Just read back.
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small instances of where survival of the fittest has applied, like when a stronger twin outlives the weaker who has disabilities, therefore the stronger has lots of offspring.
Twins? Why twins? What have twins got to do with it?
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
[sigh]
Is it really that hard?
Classic Darwinism:
1) Organisms have more offspring than are required to maintain the species. That we are not knee-deep in guppy fish, for example, who have up to a hundred fry every month for about a year of reproductive life, shows that not all of these offspring are themselves reproductively successful.
2) There is variation between the offspring. Some are slightly more suited, by virtue of that variation, than others, to be reproductively successful, in a world where there is competition for scarce resources (mates, food, water) and hazards (predators, extremes of environmental conditions)
3) Those features that are beneficial to reproductive success are going to become fixed because they will be inherited from those who have them and are therefore successful parents.
The Modern Synthesis, in brief, adds what is known about genetics:
4) The source of variation is genetic mutation, of various kinds, that slightly change the phenotype of the offspring.
5) Since mutations happen constantly, there is a constant supply of new variation allowing the evolution of novel features.
And that's about it. Despite the "forget everything every two years" thing, this has actually been pretty constant since the discovery of DNA, and points 1-3 since Darwin.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
The other important points about the "Neo-Darwinian synthesis", which married natural selection to genetics, migth include:
- any large natural population will have vast numbers of different genes in it at all times. We're all mutants. And there are billions of us. This means that (1) even quite bad genes survive for a very long time in the population and are never quite eliminated (2) there is always a supply of mutations for natural selection to work on.
- sometimes a new gene becomes fixed in a population (i.e. nearly everyone has it) just at random. In a large population this takes hundreds of thousands of generations, so it is very rare - what tends to happen is that any gene exists in many different variants - none ever becomes universal. But in a small population it only takes a few generations, so it is quite common. So any small natural population (such as a very rare species, or an isolated population on an island) is quite likely to change its genetic composition very quickly
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tiffer:
I'm sorry to turn up, say my bit and ruin the flow of the thread, but I will anyway ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Once more unto the breech, dear friends.
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As someone who comes from a scientific background (well, engineering really - useful science)
An engineer isn't a scientist any more than a bricklayer is an architect or a churchgoer is a theologian.
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I personally wouldn't hold science quite this high up.
OK. What would you hold up? "Goddidit?"
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There was a wonderful documentry recently when Stephen Hawkins publically recanted one of his books, saying he now reckoned it wasn't correct or something or other.
Physicist admits he drew incorrect conclusions. News at 11.
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The documentry interviewed many scientists, many of whom were very confused. Some decided they disagreed with Hawkins recent conclusions because the information in the book seemed to work and they had spent years treating these as truths.
Hawking is on the cutting edge and not everyone who uses his results understands them. As an engineer, I'm sure you understand approximations for practical purposes.
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Now this is very far from this debate I realise, but my point is this - why do we trust our scientists so much?
You mean by having a 17 page thread on "The Death of Darwinism"?
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It seems ever since we stopped being frightened of what they were doing we started treating them as our high priests. We now look to them to explain natural disasters and occurences. We look to them to explain why people are how they are, and why they do what they do.
The reason scientists and science are looked to is that they work better than any of the alternatives.
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I see nothing wrong with the study of science, I am just questioning the trust which we give to scientists themselves, who ultimately define what modern day science is, and who are ultimately human and capable of error.
A very good point.
First, genuine scientists have both maths and the real world to keep them honest.
Second, scientists have the constraints of mathematics to keep them honest.
Third, scientific experiments (and knowledge) are repeatable and hence subject to independent verification.
Fourth, good scientists (c.f. Hawking) know they are human and falliable and can admit mistakes (and if they don't, someone else will point them out).
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I certainly know in the engineering world that all too often the pursuit of the best way of doing something is often prioritised lower than cost and effort.
Happens in science (which is one of the reasons the concept of "Scientific Proof of a theory" is a myth - but there are deeper reasons for this). On the other hand, it shouldn't.
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Having said that I am equally sceptical of the desperate stuff I see in creationist journals, full of scientists desperately trying to find factual encouragement for those who pin their entire faith on the earth being less than a few thousand years old.
If you consider those to be scientists, I see why you are having problems.
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Personally I don't think I'll mind which was true at the end of the day.
That's one solution.
...
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Yes I agree, I am glad Hawkins
Hawking. Hawking. Hawking. Are you actually reading replies?
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stood up for what he thought was true, I think I would have just let everyone go on believing what I thought was wrong.
That's one reason you aren't a scientist. (Of course, it would have been more embarrassing for Hawking to find out that someone else had found a mistake with his work)
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My point was that we should keep in mind that some of the things we take for granted will be revealed to be nonsense in 50 years time, and that is just a fact secure in the history of science.
More usually, we find we've been dealing with simplifications and we can now use something somewhat less simplified.
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Much will continue getting closer to the truth and more and more exact, but it is still good to keep that in mind. Bear in mind Laura I am just questioning our trust in them, not demeaning it.
Who will you trust? An eternal question - and concrete results tend to come from scientists.
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Ken when I said back when people were frightened of scientists I meant more centuries ago, when they used to torture people for saying the world was round etc.
Name one such scientist. Your understanding of what science is would appear to be sorely lacking.
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I do still think people trust science and scientific conclusions these days however, but I see your point. Certainly on this thread there have been many who do.
Some of us have put the work in to learn the maths and look at some of the underlying data.
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DNA is a case and point - my mother swears by DNA, and yet she has no idea of the science of any of it. I do know that when people started trusting DNA testing they were convinced it was fool proof, and years later "they" admitted that there were many mistakes made as a result of primitive testing.
And shoddy statistics, but I digress.
What probably happened there was something along the lines of:
Scientist: No two people (other than identical twins and clones) have the same DNA
PHB: So we could verify who someone was with a DNA test? Engineer, make me something to compare DNA.
Engineer: Here you go. The chance of a false match is 1 in a million
PR Person: We have a DNA tester accurate 999,999 times in 1,000,000
Public: 1 in a million chance of being wrong sounds good to me.
Statistician: 1 in a million chance of being wrong? There are 50 million people in the country. That means that a DNA match has only one chance in fifty of being right. Hang on, no one's listening.
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In science at school we were told every couple of years to "forget what we learnt before" because essentially we had been taught simple models of the truth that were so approximated they were actually no use to anyone
And here starts one of my rants about current scientific education.
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- that is fine, we were being taught the methods and principles of science, but when this carries over into real world scenarios, eg aerodynamics, it becomes more worrying.
Fluid dynamics is absolutely foul to calculate. (I speak from experience)
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I know a fellow who is quite high up in British aerospace thingys, and did some work for the harrier a few years back etc who basically told me that the majority of their scientific research involves crashing planes, because the theory of aerodynamics is so approximated that it is practically useless to real life scenarios. It gets to the point when what kids learn in school about why a plane flies is what most people would call a lie, not even an approximation.
Try looking up the math sometime. It's not pretty.
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Evolution is another one. The majority of western people believe in evolution, and yet I am yet to hear someone give me a really good explanation of how it really works in practice.
See other answers.
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And yet I often hear people saying that they don't need to believe in God because we now have a scientific reason for our existance (which is silly in itself) and these people can't even coherently explain what they are now basing their life on.
Science needs to be much better taught. Your point?
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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J. J. Ramsey
Shipmate
# 1174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:
My point was that we should keep in mind that some of the things we take for granted will be revealed to be nonsense in 50 years time, and that is just a fact secure in the history of science.
More usually, we find we've been dealing with simplifications and we can now use something somewhat less simplified.
Expanding on that point, Isaac Asimov wrote an essay about that called The Relativity of Wrong. You should read it, Tiffer.
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I am a rationalist. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually make me rational.
Posts: 1490 | From: Tallmadge, OH | Registered: Aug 2001
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HenryT
Canadian Anglican
# 3722
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
...
Statistician: 1 in a million chance of being wrong? There are 50 million people in the country. That means that a DNA match has only one chance in fifty of being right. ...
Better Statistician: the chances that this sample matches that person are about one in fifty. However the changes that this sample matches that other person are about one in a million.
Why is this relevant - because you then have to produce the rest of the chain of evidence against the accused. Scientific evidence leans heavily on networks of fact and inference, not on single Eureka moments.
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"Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old-fashioned" P. Henry, 1788
Posts: 7231 | From: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Registered: Dec 2002
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Henry Troup:
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
...
Statistician: 1 in a million chance of being wrong? There are 50 million people in the country. That means that a DNA match has only one chance in fifty of being right. ...
Better Statistician: the chances that this sample matches that person are about one in fifty. However the changes that this sample matches that other person are about one in a million.
Agreed. I was simply trying to show how DNA data alone wasn't sufficient despite some rather impressive statistics that appear to come into play. And how various scientists and mathematicians knew all along, but simply weren't getting heard. I have absolutely no objection to someone extending my analogy to produce a further relevant point.
quote:
Why is this relevant - because you then have to produce the rest of the chain of evidence against the accused. Scientific evidence leans heavily on networks of fact and inference, not on single Eureka moments.
Agreed. Science doesn't usually make progress by standing on the shoulders of giants (whatever Newton said to annoy Hooke), it usually makes progress by forming a pyramid of more normal sized people (and often squashing those on the bottom).
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Science doesn't usually make progress by standing on the shoulders of giants (whatever Newton said to annoy Hooke), it usually makes progress by forming a pyramid of more normal sized people (and often squashing those on the bottom).
I hope your scienscing is better than your analoging. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
In a Better Place:
quote:
hatless posted:
As I understand it there are still issues about the speed of evolution; that the observed rate of useful genetic mutation is too slow
As this is on-topic here, I thought I woudl reply here.
I must make a confession. Lots of people (though few ecologists or biologists) have claimed that there is insufficient time in the world for the observed diversity of organisms to hqave been produced by Darwinian evolution.
I have never seen any argument to that effect that made sense to me. Those that I have managed to follow have invariably seemed misunderstood the biology involved.
Which is worrying, because one person who claimed this was the late Fred Hoyle, who was a sort of genius, and certainly an overwhelmingly better mathematician than I am (though not a better biologist I think). So it hasn't all been YECcies.
Anyway, some guesstimates to illustrate why the argument seems silly to me.
There are two kinds of mutation to consider - alterations within genes, and changes in the layout of genes on chromosomes (including gene duplication which is thought to be a common way of new genes emerging).
Start with alterations within genes.
In bacteria, populations are so large, that every imaginable point pmutation happens every generation in most populations. In fact every imaginamble combination of 2 point mutations will occur every few minutes in the E coli in your gut. Add in a bit of horizontal transmission & the supply of mutations is ovwewhelmingly gretater than that needed.
So stick to animals (which we are interested in because we are animals). The most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all animals is usually thought to be anythign from 500 to 1500 million years ago.
As most animals are little wormlike things that reproduce once a year or more, lets say that 500 million generations separate us from the MRCA.
Observed point mutation rates vary widely in different genes and different organisms. Some genes hardly change at all throughout life & have point mutation rates lower than one in a billion. Others are actively altered in every individual & have point mutation rates of about in ten thousand.
Typical figures for protein-coding genes vary from about 1 in 1 million to 1 in 1 billion (that's point rates - the chance of one DNA base being altered - the chances of an arbitrary mutation within agiven gene is higher than that of course)
Different versions of the "same" protein found in different animals typically have 25%-80% of their DNA sequence in common. So over 500 million generations there is simply no problem. Even if animals were asexual you might expect that sort of accumulated mutation, or more.
As we are sexual and new combinations of genes are constantly being produced within the population, that level of variation could be driven by much lower mutation rates. In fact the high level of sequence similarity between different organisms shows how much resistance to change there is, how important selection is, and how hard it is for new mutations to become fixed. If genetic change was purely random those genes would be more different from each other than they are.
What about between genes, chromosome rearrangements?
Animals typically have between 10,000 and 100,000 distinct genes. For 100,000 new genes to arrive in 500 million generations is one per 5,000 generations. I think observed rates of duplication can cope with that! I have seen it suggested that gene duplications occur on averge once per zygote. mostly in male sperm, and they mostly die before fertilisation.
If this was true the rate of new gene accumulation imples that one in 5,000 duplications is passed on to future gnerations and becomes fixed. Not a big number.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Big Chaz
Shipmate
# 4862
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Posted
Science is self defining and self referencing. Within this framework evolution works. It rests secure on its own assumptions. It is a meta-narrative a story that shapes our world view.
It is a very different story to the one about the man who was God almighty hanging broken on a cross. He who bore our scars to liberate the poor and the captives. The man who stood in solidarity with the suffering to draw them into the comfort of Gods kingdom. The one who taught us that that strength is not violence but love and vulnerability. He who showed that love is stronger even than death and more glorious in its weakness than all this worlds’ strength. He who bled to liberate all creation from the chains of our sin. He who will cast down mighty from their thrones and raise the poor up when he comes in glory.
Let us listen to the story of evolution and learn who we should be if we are true disciples. Evolution is the perfect myth of empire. The weak are to be crushed the strong survive and this is the means of creation. Out of the destruction of the weak, out of the ashes of eternal conflict arises; perfection, advancement, growth and creation. (sounds a bit like a fucking fascist rally don’t it boys) The advancement of the gene the growth of the species is the aim the individual fights tooth and claw adapts and grows for its own self preservation but to this greater aim. Ah good capitalism is safe we can all be selfish greedy bastard its makes the world go round. Imperialism is safe we owe our debt to the ‘species’ our tribe. Oh and the week can get crushed. So we can screw the poor. After all it’s the nature of things they are just part of the natural order not getting selected, let them starve. It is not some odd notion that every word in the bible must be true but my political sensibilities and my commitment to the God of the week, the poor the lost, the God of Love and mercy which makes me think this particular story might be a bit dubious. Mind you if I was running shit in this unjust, savage, crappy excuse for a civilisation I’d certainly prefer the second version. People might start getting ideas about changing things if they believed that first one. In short you have been had you bunch of mugs.
Posts: 91 | Registered: Aug 2003
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Big Chaz, if I follow your little rant correctly you seem to have confused "survival of the fittest" with "survival of the strongest", and then extrapolated that to "non-survival of the weakest". And, then apply the resulting erroneous understanding of Darwinian evolution to political and sociological fields resulting in some bizarre parody.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Oh dear. Another person who thinks that science is about linking what is with what should be.
Listen, Chaz, your rant makes about as much sense as suggesting that because people who fall off cliffs plummet to a messy death, we should push people off of cliffs.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
*sigh*
quote:
Originally posted by Big Chaz:
Science is self defining and self referencing. Within this framework evolution works. It rests secure on its own assumptions. It is a meta-narrative a story that shapes our world view.
Science is the best means we have of understanding the behaviour of the world. If the behaviour of the world does not shape your world view, you come extremely close to one definition of insanity.
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It is a very different story to the one about the man who was God almighty hanging broken on a cross.
Your point?
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Let us listen to the story of evolution and learn who we should be if we are true disciples.
I don't know anyone who says that strict, individual level practical darwinism is a good way to live lives.
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Evolution is the perfect myth of empire.
Someone doesn't understand the concept of biodiversity...
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The weak are to be crushed the strong survive and this is the means of creation. Out of the destruction of the weak, out of the ashes of eternal conflict arises; perfection, advancement, growth and creation.
Strawman.
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(sounds a bit like a fucking fascist rally don’t it boys)
So you are claiming that the best understanding of the world we have is fascist? Good to know.
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The advancement of the gene the growth of the species is the aim the individual fights tooth and claw adapts and grows for its own self preservation but to this greater aim.
What?
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Ah good capitalism is safe we can all be selfish greedy bastard its makes the world go round.
Try reading Civilisation by Jared Diamond, and then get back to me. (Unchecked capitalism undermines the ecosystem, which is really not good for anything).
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Imperialism is safe we owe our debt to the ‘species’ our tribe.
Our tribe is not a species. Humanity is a species. Try learning about the beliefs you are setting up strawmen about.
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Oh and the week can get crushed.
Why not throw out a standard unit of time?
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So we can screw the poor. After all it’s the nature of things they are just part of the natural order not getting selected, let them starve.
At a purely evollutionary level, because they might have genes or knowledge useful to the rest of the species.
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It is not some odd notion that every word in the bible must be true but my political sensibilities and my commitment to the God of the week,
You mean you will have another one in a fourtnight's time? Let's hope this one believes in the truth.
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the poor the lost, the God of Love and mercy which makes me think this particular story might be a bit dubious.
Translation: I'd rather believe a pretty story than something with real evidence behind it. I would also not check where the evidence leads before saying I stick to my pretty story.
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Mind you if I was running shit in this unjust, savage, crappy excuse for a civilisation I’d certainly prefer the second version.
I wouldn't. I would prefer people to believe that things get given to them and that they will be helped rather than that they believe in change, in progress and in helping themselves out.
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People might start getting ideas about changing things if they believed that first one.
Whereas people who believe in evolution believe that things actually change and that this isn't a bad thing. They also usually believe in truth above pretty stories.
Last time I checked, the Enlightenment was not an overtly Christian movement, but was the same movement from which evolution developed. Do you really want to compare records about doing things?
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In short you have been had you bunch of mugs.
If you really believe all the crap you have just written, you are the one who has been had.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Big Chaz:
Science is self defining and self referencing.
Actually its the opposite because it constantly refers bnack to observation. If you had said that about mathematics, or (some kinds of) philosophy, you would have had a point.
quote:
Within this framework evolution works. It rests secure on its own assumptions. It is a meta-narrative a story that shapes our world view.
No it isn't. That's precisely what so many people get wrong. They read about natural selection (or more likely hear at third hand from a hostile source, such as YECCies, or a badly informed one such as the US educational system) and mistake a comparitvely simple set of pretty obvious observations about the physical world with some sort of metaphysical origin myth.
Its not just the YECcies who make that mistake - the Social Darwinists and so-called evolutionary psychologists do as well.
Sometimes a cigar really is a cigar.
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It is a very different story to the one about the man who was God almighty hanging broken on a cross.
Yes. So?
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Evolution is the perfect myth of empire. The weak are to be crushed the strong survive and this is the means of creation. Out of the destruction of the weak, out of the ashes of eternal conflict arises; perfection, advancement, growth and creation. (sounds a bit like a fucking fascist rally don’t it boys)
It certainly does. That's because the evolutionary story you are recounting there is not the comparitively boring Darwinian one (in which evolution is emergent from the interaction between random variation and natural selction) but a rather different, and older, one in which evolution is driven by inherent propensities in livign things. It is a very old idea (ancient Greek at least) that became really popular in Germany in the late 19th century. And, mixed with some Social-Darwininst bollocks it became of of the intellectual justifications for 29th centuty fascism and racism.
Few serious scientists have believed it since the "neo-Darwinian synthesis" of natural selection and genetics
The advancement of the gene the growth of the species is the aim the individual fights tooth and claw adapts and grows for its own self preservation but to this greater aim. Ah good capitalism is safe we can all be selfish greedy bastard its makes the world go round. Imperialism is safe we owe our debt to the ‘species’ our tribe. Oh and the week can get crushed. So we can screw the poor. After all it’s the nature of things they are just part of the natural order not getting selected, let them starve. It is not some odd notion that every word in the bible must be true but my political sensibilities and my commitment to the God of the week, the poor the lost, the God of Love and mercy which makes me think this particular story might be a bit dubious. Mind you if I was running shit in this unjust, savage, crappy excuse for a civilisation I’d certainly prefer the second version. People might start getting ideas about changing things if they believed that first one. In short you have been had you bunch of mugs. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Big Chaz:
Science is self defining and self referencing.
Actually its the opposite because it constantly refers back to observation. If you had said that about mathematics, or (some kinds of) philosophy, you would have had a point.
quote:
Within this framework evolution works. It rests secure on its own assumptions. It is a meta-narrative a story that shapes our world view.
No it isn't. That's precisely what so many people get wrong. They read about natural selection (or more likely hear at third hand from a hostile source, such as YECCies, or a badly informed one such as the US educational system) and mistake a comparitvely simple set of pretty obvious observations about the physical world with some sort of metaphysical origin myth.
Its not just the YECcies who make that mistake - the Social Darwinists and so-called evolutionary psychologists do as well.
Sometimes a cigar really is a cigar.
quote:
It is a very different story to the one about the man who was God almighty hanging broken on a cross.
Yes. So?
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Evolution is the perfect myth of empire. The weak are to be crushed the strong survive and this is the means of creation. Out of the destruction of the weak, out of the ashes of eternal conflict arises; perfection, advancement, growth and creation. (sounds a bit like a fucking fascist rally don’t it boys)
It certainly does. That's because the evolutionary story you are recounting there is NOT the Darwinian one but a very different story in which evolution is driven by inherent propensities in living things. It is a very old idea (ancient Greek at least) that became really popular in Germany in the late 19th century. And, mixed with some Social-Darwininst bollocks it became of of the intellectual justifications for 29th centuty fascism and racism.
Few serious scientists have believed it since the "neo-Darwinian synthesis" of natural selection and genetics in the 2nd quarter of the 20th century. (& the cleverest ones never did, except for that turd Haeckel - but thats another story)
quote:
The advancement of the gene the growth of the species is the aim the individual fights tooth and claw adapts and grows for its own self preservation but to this greater aim. Ah good capitalism is safe we can all be selfish greedy bastard its makes the world go round. Imperialism is safe we owe our debt to the ‘species’ our tribe.
An excellent parody of a theory no-one who knows much about it has believed since our great-grand-parent's time.
Except for the authors of the Bell Curve that is - but they gave ample evidence of being ignoramuses about genetics anyway.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:
Imperialism is safe we owe our debt to the ‘species’ our tribe.
Our tribe is not a species. Humanity is a species. Try learning about the beliefs you are setting up strawmen about.
To be fair to him, if he has been exposed to some right-wing racist shit he may well have seen this blurring of "species" and "tribe" and "family". They usually make heroic assumptions about territorial behaviour as well. Its quite a standard ![[Projectile]](graemlins/puke2.gif) sort of argument in certain circles.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Big Chaz said quote:
Let us listen to the story of evolution and learn who we should be if we are true disciples. Evolution is the perfect myth of empire. The weak are to be crushed the strong survive and this is the means of creation. Out of the destruction of the weak, out of the ashes of eternal conflict arises; perfection, advancement, growth and creation. (sounds a bit like a fucking fascist rally don’t it boys) The advancement of the gene the growth of the species is the aim the individual fights tooth and claw adapts and grows for its own self preservation but to this greater aim.
I'm not as up on the nuances of current thought on evolution as some folks on this thread, but as I understand evolution, success is about whatever advances the survival of the species. For hyenas it can be one young sibling destroying the other before they even wean or it can be a meerkat laying down its life by being the hawk look-out for the colony. It can be a male who is attractive by carrying a prohibitively large, flashy set of tail-feathers, a tail that may make it die at a younger age than the female it mates with, or a male who beats the shit out of the rival and takes the whole pride. In humans it can involve leadership that runs a tight ship, little deviation, and which conquers other human groups and thereby earns security (it seems), or leadership that allows people to be creative and make stuff happen that benefits the rest of the tribe-civilization-world thereby encouraging people to peaceably enjoy their prosperity. All these things work to a greater or lesser degree to advance their species.
The old dog-eat-dog simplistic version of Darwinism isn't what I think of at all. Personally I believe that if all humans could live by an intelligent loveGod-loveneighbor-loveself model it would be a pretty successful paradigm. But I ain't holding my breath since we don't come near to completely running on intelligence and love yet.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Rex Monday
None but a blockhead
# 2569
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Posted
I'm not really here, but there's a very funny piece in SciAm this month about the Cobb County textbook sticker nonsense.
R
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I am largely against organised religion, which is why I am so fond of the C of E.
Posts: 514 | From: Gin Lane | Registered: Mar 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
as I understand evolution, success is about whatever advances the survival of the species.
No. Natural selection can be expected to presreve characters that give the individual organism a greater chance of leaving more offspring. (Put like that it is almost a tautology).
There is no particular reason to think that it works for the survival of a species (or any other group) in any way other than the reproduction of the individuals.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
I stand corrected.
But the gist of what I meant is that success in passing on one's genes doesn't always mean being the biggest, baddest lichen/buttercup/sardine/hare/mosquito on the block.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Of course not.
It often seems to include quite a lot of co-operation and mutual aid.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Tiffer
Shipmate
# 3073
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Posted
Sorry to have forgotten to post for so long - just in reply, Galileo was tortured for saying the world was round and recanted immediately, because he was a wimp. So there .
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/g/galileo.htm
And I'm afraid Liberal Backslider that your explanation is the one I have heard before, and it still doesn't explain much. It explains occasions where evolution occurs (I think most people believe it occurs) but it doesn't go anywhere like near enough to explaining the human eye or how single cell amoeba (or whatever they were) became animals.
And replying in a rude and sarcastic manner isn't big or clever
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"All the Fat belongs to the Lord"
-Leviticus 3:16b
Posts: 411 | From: England (all over) | Registered: Jul 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tiffer:
Galileo was tortured for saying the world was round
No he wasn't.
And the link you posted doesn't say he was.
Everybody who thought about it thought the world was round in those days. Including the sailors who had gone right round it.
And Galileo wasn't tortured.
quote:
It explains occasions where evolution occurs (I think most people believe it occurs) but it doesn't go anywhere like near enough
But it does. It most obviously does.
If you think it doesn't explain you must try to tell us what is missing. What is wrong?
That's what this thread is for, and why its in Dead Horses - so that theories about why Darwinism doesn't work don't mess up the main part of the Ship. There are many of them, and so far they have all turned out to be nonsense.
Whats's yours?
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Rex Monday
None but a blockhead
# 2569
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Posted
Oh, must resist hitting horse with whip... must... resist.
Darn.
Anyway, here's a fun article about Avida, an evolution simulator program that takes self-replicating lumps of code, randomly modifies them and then rewards those which best carry out some arbitary task by giving them more resources. It's very interesting, and is producing all sorts of results that are getting biologists intrigued. The program has come up with artificial organisms with incredibly complex functionality, certainly way beyond anything that was expected: however, since you can go back through the logs you can see just how they came about. These things qualify as 'irreducably complex' by any of the IDers definitions - but they just happen to have evolved that way, through random mutation and selection pressures.
The best bit of the article, though, is about creationists who (as you might imagine) take great issue with this. "Fine!" said the project people. "It's open source. Here, look for yourself!".
As a result, loads of minor bugs have been fixed courtesy of the creationists and the program is now even better.
R
[edited for typo]
[ 29. January 2005, 14:30: Message edited by: Rex Monday ]
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I am largely against organised religion, which is why I am so fond of the C of E.
Posts: 514 | From: Gin Lane | Registered: Mar 2002
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tiffer:
And I'm afraid Liberal Backslider that your explanation is the one I have heard before, and it still doesn't explain much. It explains occasions where evolution occurs (I think most people believe it occurs) but it doesn't go anywhere like near enough to explaining the human eye or how single cell amoeba (or whatever they were) became animals.
Why on earth not? What's to stop a human eye evolving through many different stages by just the process I described, especially given that not only are all the intermediate stages perfectly conceivable but also exist in extant animals in nature?
As for single celled animals evolving multicellularity - what's the problem here? There are a number of unicells that form loose colonies in some situations, and there is not much difference between this and a sponge, which can be put through a sieve and will spontaneously reform (IIRC). If these changes (all it requires is a stickier cell membrane) are advantageous, why is the process described above insufficient?
Is this really just a dressed up argument from incredulity?
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
A school board in Pennsylvania has prepared a statement that it's science teachers are supposed to read out to their biology students (it can be found here) that states that Darwinian Evolution isn't a scientific theory, and the ID is a valid alternative view. The teachers have their own opinions, and several of them are refusing to read the statement ( their letter is reproduced here).
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Some rather confused thinking in that statement, methinks.
Compare and contrast:
quote:
Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.
quote:
The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Though the concept of a reference book entitled Of People and Pandas does create some rather ... errmmm, well .... errrr ... thoughts.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Posted on the now closed "religion and science" thread in Purgatory
quote:
Originally posted by jimbob88:
How can a Christian accept the Genesis story as completely true, when there is so much scientific evidence to suggest that it isn't possible for the Genesis story to be literaly true?
quote:
Originally posted by -TheNonBeliver-:
i agree with this person........i mean u cant seriously stay the Genesis story is the basis for the creation of earth....there is so much evidence that proves this story to be a load of tosh to be completly honest...
1st time post
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Jimbob/The Unbeliever
Most of us, IME, cope with it by not believing that the Genesis story is literally true. Did you somehow come by the impression that most of us do?
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by jimbob88:
How can a Christian accept the Genesis story as completely true, when there is so much scientific evidence to suggest that it isn't possible for the Genesis story to be literaly true?
Ultimately it comes down to a question of authority and understanding of the nature of Scripture. If you believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God, inerrant in every detail and the supreme authority, and if you believe that the Genesis account of creation is literal history (and, you can believe the first about the nature of Scripture and still consider the Genesis accounts to be a different form of literature than literal history, so the two don't necessarily follow) then you really do have to say that that authority over rides the authority of modern science. Given such a belief in the authority and nature of Scripture and the Genesis accounts, then the acceptance of the Genesis accounts as literally true is logically consistant. There is probably just enough unanswered problems with the contemporary scientific account and the Creation Science account answers just enough questions to allow Christians with such beliefs to not have to worry too much about the modern scientific account being at odds with their understanding of Genesis.
Personally, I consider that the Creation Science side overstate the problems with contemporary scientific understandings, and don't fully recognise the weaknesses in their own version. I disagree with the understanding of Scripture as the inerrant, inspired word of God, the understanding of Genesis as presenting literal history, and Creation Science. But, I can see how people can honestly hold such a position.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Sean
Shipmate
# 51
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
A school board in Pennsylvania has prepared a statement that it's science teachers are supposed to read out to their biology students (it can be found here) that states that Darwinian Evolution isn't a scientific theory, and the ID is a valid alternative view. The teachers have their own opinions, and several of them are refusing to read the statement ( their letter is reproduced here).
Since the kids rarely listen when you do want them to, it wouldn't be very hard to make sure they weren't while you read that.
Posts: 1085 | From: A very long way away | Registered: May 2001
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Sean
Shipmate
# 51
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Posted
I said:
quote:
it wouldn't be very hard to make sure they weren't [listening] while you read that.
Oh - I see they've already made certain that they won't:
quote:
[...] the disclaimer will be read by school district administrators [..]
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"So far as the theories of mathematics are about reality, they are not certain; so far as they are certain, they are not about reality" - Einstein
Posts: 1085 | From: A very long way away | Registered: May 2001
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Barnabas62
Host
# 9110
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Posted
A true story for Jimbob. Some years ago, when pondering over the Genesis "literal truth" thing, my wife and I were on holiday in N Yorkshire (UK), at a place called Ravenscar, a high camping site overlooking the sea. One day we took our kids and our dog down to the sea shore - a spectacular descent of about 650 feet. The bay was beautiful, the dog ran into the sea, splashed around and came out to splash us. My eldest son, then aged seven, was examining the stratified rocks at the base of the cliff and pulled out, with some difficulty, a piece of shale from the cliff. He brought it over for us to see. The shale contained a beautiful ammonite fossil and he asked me how it had got there and what it meant.
I remember looking up the whole height of the cliff, seeing the thousands of sedimetary layers in the cliff face and becoming deeply aware of a very simple fact of life. God is not in the business of deceiving small children. So I told my kids the truth as I understood it - that the earth was very very old and long long ago it was full of primitive creatures. One of them had got trapped in the mud and died. For millions of years, its remains had been trapped in the mud and nobody had seen them. Until that day, when my eldest son had found the rock. We were the first people to see the remains of that primitive creature since it died. My eldest son thought for moment then said "Wow dad!"
That fossil was a very treasured possession for our children - and thirty years later we still have it. From that day, I gave up worrying about the literal or otherwise truth of Genesis.
But here may be a helpful way to approach the problem. We cannot say "This book is right, this rock is wrong" without doing damage to truth. A reasonable synopsis of the first few verses of Genesis 1 is that God spoke creation into being. Therefore the rock, the ammonite, even the very light by which we saw it, are also ways in which God "speaks", communicates Himself to us. To claim inerrancy for the Book and duplicity for the Rock is a pretty arrogant thing to do.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
In the Purg thread "Is Creation Religious", ChristineMarie saith:
quote:
I do not think that evolution by natural selection as a scientific fact (aka Dawkins) to explain the whole complexity of life, should be taught in schools. Gould's position should be taught too, and those who are seeking an explanation from complexity theories.
It seems to me that teaching natural selection as a fact for all life is to mistake science for faith, or rather, include faith with science. The faith that we will one day find all the slowly transitioning forms.
Can I point out that Gould's position is "evolution by natural selection"? Gould's Punk Eek does not posit any new mechanism; he merely suggests that speciation - specifically - tends to happen in small populations and over geologically short time scales. The mechanism by which it does so is purely Darwinian. It is generally accepted that Gould over-egged his pudding somewhat by putting more difference between "classic" Darwinism and his model than the actual model justifies. Indeed, Darwin himself actually said that there was no reason to suppose that evolution always progressed at a similar, slow, rate.
Can I also point out that Gould, and even Behe, believe in "slowly transitioning forms" - found or otherwise?
And finally, can I point out that the presence or absence of transitional forms is not actually the strongest evidence of common descent, not by a long chalk? I'd rate endogenous retroviruses as a much stronger line of evidence. Since the ERVs in the human genome and the chimp genome demonstrate perfectly well that we share a common ancestor, it follows as night follows day that a number of intermediate species must have existed between the last common ancestor and both chimp and man, whether we have the fossils on display at the British Museum or not.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
I have Gould's Big Book on evolutionary theory, which is a heavy read and I am not very far through it yet. (He seemed to have intended it to be his last testament - its huge, discursive, and highly opinionated)
But he's very very clear that he is within the "Darwinist" camp. And in fact that he doesn't really think there is any other camp to be in.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Girl with the pearl earring
Apprentice
# 9151
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Posted
A brief thought, which I heard from one of the preachers at our college chapel last term:
'If scientists look at God and see nothing, is it possible than when scientists see nothing it is because they are looking at God?'
Not a full explanation by any means, but possibly a means of bringing God into, for example, natural selection, and the steps we can't see, as well as many other unexplained phenomena.
Of course, the danger of this is that as we come to understand various scientific phenomena, we start to feel we don't need God to fill the gaps, which is very dangerous
Posts: 26 | From: Cambridge UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Halo
Shipmate
# 6933
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Posted
I think that people will always see what they want to see. An evolutionist and a creationist may look at the same piece of evidence and come to completely different conclusions.
To demonstrate,
1, Go into the next room and remember all the things in the room that are red. Come back and see how many you remembered.
2, Then without going back and looking, name all the blue things in the room.
3, Go back and check your answers.
If the excercise has the desired result you would have been able to remember many red items and only a few blue ones in spite of what the actual red/ blue ratio was.
Perhaps both creationists and evolutionists cling in 'faith' to pre-conceived ideas and scientists are by no means the impartial observers they like to think they are.
Posts: 625 | From: The Land of the Long White Cloud | Registered: May 2004
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Halo:
scientists are by no means the impartial observers they like to think they are.
One of the reasons that people learnng science go through rituals like taking courses in statistics (hard to avoid, I'm on my third) is precisely because everyone involved realises that perceptions are biased and observers are not impartial, so they try to train people to make transparent analyses of observations.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Halo:
scientists are by no means the impartial observers they like to think they are.
Or, the impartial observers others assume they are. A very good reason for everyone to have an introduction to philosophy of science, when you think about what is involved in science you'd realise quite quickly that science and scientists can never be impartial and objective. No amount of high ideals is going to change that.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
I'm not that much of a scientist but almost the first thing you learn when studying the basics of electricity is that the equipment you use to measure whatever property you are interested in alters the thing being measured.
You can work round it and adjust readings accordingly but if you don't understand that, you wouldn't know that your readings needed adjusting.
Same applies to using rulers etc to measure phyical things, but not often on such a scale.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Barnabas62
Host
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Halo:
scientists are by no means the impartial observers they like to think they are.
Or, the impartial observers others assume they are. A very good reason for everyone to have an introduction to philosophy of science, when you think about what is involved in science you'd realise quite quickly that science and scientists can never be impartial and objective. No amount of high ideals is going to change that.
An additional point. The nature of scientific inquiry is that it proceeds by replicable experiments and findings and peer review. Briefly, results are exposed to the air, can be checked and verified or challenged. This process is not perfect but does eliminate virtually all imperfect observation or inbuilt bias in experiments.
In the Darwinian context, the evidence which underlies the hypothesis is ubiquitous and the means of evaluating the age of the evidence very well attested. Anyone can look, anyone can replicate/check/seek to report anomalies/false findings.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Anyone can look, anyone can replicate/check/seek to report anomalies/false findings.
Even Creation Scientists. I don't know of any examples (and if there were I'd expect them to have been trumpeted loudly), but there's no reason why a Creation Scientist reading a paper can't spot and report a genuine flaw in it. Which means that, in that instance at least, the Creation Scientist is doing good science despite any religious opinions held.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
The fact that there are Creation Scientists trying so hard to do so, and failing so miserably, is very good evidence, as it happens, of the robustness of mainstream scientific models.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Barnabas62
Host
# 9110
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
The fact that there are Creation Scientists trying so hard to do so, and failing so miserably, is very good evidence, as it happens, of the robustness of mainstream scientific models.
Karl, I agree with you and Alan. You can enter the process as an athiest, a member of any faith community, with whatever presuppositions you've got. The process is indifferent to all of that.
I'm not sure of the details but I think a well respected figure stepped back from the current notions of evolutionary development prior to the appearance of single cell organisms (a subject about which I am very ignorant. Apparently he decided the ideas didn't "fly". Score one for Intelligent Design? Not really. He's just one guy expressing an honest view on the basis of the evidence. It isn't "life or death" for him.
The hardest thing to get across about scientific enquiry is that ideas move in response to findings. That makes scientific enquiry a humble and tentative process, always open to revision. It does not deal in certainties, it deals in "best availables". And it is open to surprise. I like it.
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Elder Moroni on the "Inheriting the Wind" thread in Purgatory:
People use the word "evolution" in different ways. Do you mean "evolution" of the species - including natural selection etc? I studied micro-evolution at Uni, and it seems to me that there is not much evidence for this "theory" at all.
OK, I'm responding here to avoid taking the other thread any further into the Dead Horse graveyard.
In science (biological sciences in particular), "evolution" has only one meaning. It's shorthand for the development of new species through the process of natural selection acting on populations of creatures which display a range of variations for selection to act on, coupled to genetic mutation as a source of new variation. It is an extremely successful description of the process whereby the observed current (and fossilised) diversity of life on this earth developed over time.
Some people, including it seems many Creation Scientists and other popularisers of various forms of Creationism, use the word in other ways that do tend to result in a certain amount of confusion.
Though astrophysicists and cosmologists use the word to describe the development of the universe and the stars and galaxies within it, that is a different theory - it has no natural selection or mutation element (though it has been used in some highly speculative hypotheses relating to bubble universes within a multiverse).
Nor does biological evolution describe the origin of the first self-replicating organisms, the DNA code etc. It also doesn't describe the processes of human cultural development (despite the highly speculative hypothesis of "memes") where much of that development couldn't realistically be described as "natural".
And, to use "evolution" as a shorthand for a fully materialistic atheistic view of science is a really big stretch for the word. Not that it stops someone like Duane Gish from using the word in that sense.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
Not sure if this is the place to post this, but I figure if I put it in Purgatory I'd be told it was Dead Horse territory, so I'm asking here.
An Answers in Genesis guy is coming to our church the week after next to give a seminar on creationism. Here's his bio:
quote:
Dr. Silvestru was once himself an evolutionist but after a conversion experience he began to explore the creation story -- what he found convinced him that the Bible is accurate and that the study of science confirms it.
Now, I've always been a bit uneasy with 6-day young-earth creationism, which is officially part of What We Believe in our church. But as I'm not in any way a scientist (not even as much as my engineer husband, who I've just learned from reading this thread is no more a scientist than a bricklayer is an architect!!), I don't really have the knowledge, vocabulary, or interest to engage in the Creationism debate at any meaningful level. My attitude has always been that I know God created the world and I'm not particular bothered about when or how He did it.
However, when it gets to the point of making a belief in YEC a test of faith and fellowship, I get a bit squirmy. And I have a very bright science-minded 7 y.o. who is learning different stories about origins at church and at school and will probably want some more clarificationat home than my own fuzzy philosophy is able to provide.
So, if you were a bit of a liberal in a conservative church, with no real science background beyond 1st-year university biology 20 years ago, what intelligent questions would you post to the "Answers in Genesis" guy during the "question and answer" time? I know there's a huge amount of contempt around here for AiG, ICR, etc., but if you were in a room with a "Creation Scientist" in this kind of setting, what would you ask?
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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Zeke
Ship's Inquirer
# 3271
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Posted
I'm not a scientist either, but I was brought up as well in a literalist church. What started me being skeptical at about age 12 was nobody being able to give me any decent explanation of how they reconcile the two different versions of the creation in Genesis. It was as if I were terribly tasteless and crude, as well as suspect theologically(or however you say it) for even bringing it up. My first question, if he really says he believes Genesis literally, is which version is the right one. Read them both carefully first, taking note of the totally different details in the sequence of events, so you will know if he is just trying to snow you. I've never yet been given a decent answer to this from anybody who says they believe Genesis literally.
Perhaps, though, more knowledgeable people who post here can come up with something much better, which is entirely possible.
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No longer the Bishop of Durham
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If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it? --Benjamin Franklin
Posts: 5259 | From: Deep in the American desert | Registered: Sep 2002
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J. J. Ramsey
Shipmate
# 1174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TrudyTrudy (I say unto you):
So, if you were a bit of a liberal in a conservative church, with no real science background beyond 1st-year university biology 20 years ago, what intelligent questions would you post to the "Answers in Genesis" guy during the "question and answer" time?
Not quite an answer to the question, but I'd suggest reading through the various pages of TalkOrigins, before the question and answer session. The site's list of "Must-Read" files is here, and unfortunately, it's kind of long. There's a page called Stumper Questions for Creationists, although if you are dealing with a practiced charlatan, he might have answers for those questions. They'll be wrong answers, of course, but they'll probably sound good enough that the proper rebuttal won't be immediately obvious. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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I am a rationalist. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually make me rational.
Posts: 1490 | From: Tallmadge, OH | Registered: Aug 2001
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