Evolution Named Scientific Achievement of 2005 943
lazy_hp writes "The BBC reports that research into evolution's inner working has been named rtop science achievement of 2005 From the article: 'The prestigious US journal Science publishes its top 10 list of major endeavours at the end of each year. The number one spot was awarded jointly to several studies that illuminated the intricate workings of evolution. The announcement comes in the same week that a US court banned the teaching of intelligent design in classrooms.'"
And the winner for 2006 is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Aw, what do I know?
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
The saddest part is that no matter how vast our understanding of evolution becomes, there will always be those who, for religious or logically unsound reasons, or just out of plain ignorance and misplaced incredulity, will reject it, and there will be those that wish to misrepresent or out-and-out destroy science simply to prop up their too-deeply held superstitions.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the theory of evolution is supported by both strong scientific evidence and observation. It is also predictable.
One is the product of science, and belongs in a science class. The other is not.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
ID proponents would be better served examining how evolution *validates* their viewpoint. Just because evolution doesn't specify an Intelligent Designer doesn't mean there isn't one, just that we can't prove one scientifically. For some reason, being unable to prove something scientifically means, to some people, it just doesn't exist.
I'm not a Christian, and I don't have a firm belief in any kind of God, but ID supporters are clearly looking at evolution the wrong way.
Re:And the winner for 2006 is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My fellow Christians: Strategize (Score:2, Insightful)
Tacky, tacky (Score:5, Insightful)
And, hello -- how about the HapMap?
Re:My fellow Christians: Strategize (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot Under Siege.... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm wondering what the hell is going on? Is it just a political hot potato and
It would be scary to think that all the geeks around me actually believe in religion. When I was younger I just assummed that most people were completely secular like me, and didn't believe in religion at all; delegating it to the status of fictional works like comic books etc. It came as something of a shock to my world view that most people are not in fact secular but do hold religious beliefs. I haven't quite recovered from it.
Or maybe it's just trolling by the GNAA et al, with Slashdotters flaming back. I'd like to believe this.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument actually collapses on itself, because you have essentially said ID does nothing but add a layer of complexity to evolution--a layer that is unnecessary, does not aid our understanding of the evolutionary process, and does not alter observational results.
That is exactly why I oppose ID being taught as an "alternative" or "replacement" for evolution. It is not, it is simply an ill-conceived modification designed to inject monotheistic dogma into a realm where it has no place.
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are prominent examples of *non-theists* who are proponents of ID (like Michael Behe and Francis Crick, for example - Google is your friend).
It's interesting to me that this whole thing has become a religious debate. I read the sticker that the Kansas school board wanted to attach to the textbooks and didn't think it was all that offensive - just pointed out that there are holes in evolution and that it should be approached with an open mind - much like Behe and Crick (and others) have said, too... although Crick was pretty well abused for his panspermia position, too, so I guess it's not all that surprising. I guess the worst thing you can do is suggest the scientific community might be *wrong*... >)
Nato
Re:lol. political awards anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
The elements that created everything had to come from somewhere.
Where did the Intelligent being come from? The elements that comprise the being had to come from somewhere.
Whatever you reply to this "he always existed" or whatever, is the same reply I'll give you to you about where the elements came from. It's just as logical as yours.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot Under Siege.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My fellow Christians: Strategize (Score:5, Insightful)
"I think the planets should be renamed because they're named after fake gods."
You are free to call the planets whatever you wish.
But clearly what you really want is the power (through government dictate) to force others to use names that are approved by your particular religion.
I hear a lot of Christians complain about how oppressed they are.
In the end the complaints turn out to be about wanting the power to control others.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Tacky, tacky (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
If one finds happiness in slavery, is he still a slave? Is it still wrong to treat him as a slave? Even if not "wrong," is it still sad?
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Politics and academia (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe that was a Good Thing, but should decisions like identifying the Best Scientific Achievement of a year and medical decisions of vast importance be something we leave open to the whims of politics? I realize that in this case there was no "buckling" from pressure but it apparently was intended to reflect political shifts of our time. Whatever the case, it just doesn't sit well with me.
Re:Slashdot Under Siege.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it scary to you that so many geeks might actually believe religion? An awful lot of brilliant math and science has been performed by people who firmly believed religion...does that terrify you, too?
Or do you just assume that, if someone believes in religion, they're supporters of ID and incapable of rational thought?
I don't understand the anti-religous crusade so many people seem to take on as their own little holy war. Why the hell can't you leave me alone? You believe what you want, and I'll believe what I want. I won't teach your kids to believe what I do, and you can just stay away from mine.
If you want to talk about testable hypotheses, we can do that. You produce evidence contrary to my understanding of the universe, and I'll change my understanding. I'd hope you could do the same thing.
But if you want to get into a contest of faiths, don't even bother. And don't think that atheism isn't a faith: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You can prove to me that we as a species evolved, ultimately, from a tiny pile of organic slime clinging to a rock in some antediluvian sea. Check. You can't prove to me that no god exists, any more than I can prove to you one does.
Your railing against religion (and everyone else's) as a whole (as opposed to railing against statements made based on religion that are demonstrably false, which is, of course, appropriate) is no better than any other zealot demanding that his religion is right and everyone else's is wrong.
Re:usual Slashdot accuracy (Score:2, Insightful)
"Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in a public school classroom"
I'd link to other news sites, but you can google it yourself.
Not banned. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Whilst some may consider my forthcoming mélange of colloquialisms a troll, I plough forward with abandon. (Gotta love those word a day calendar things)
Why shouldn't a Science magazine do an end-zone dance about the court decision? Every time a vestige of the dark ages is spotted in the light it should be smote from existence. Mind you I'm not referring to religion, I'm referring to the incessant dogmatic diatribes full of fire and brimstone and mindless ramblings of people whose sole reason for disagreeing something is 'because,' that's it, no argument, no intelligent debate, just 'because.'
Re:Slashdot Under Siege.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ever hear of this guy [wikipedia.org]. He was right. He almost got burned at the stake. There are thousands more like him, a lot of whom did get burned at the stake. For what? Being right.
You think this won't happen again? Think that humanity has "grown up"? What happens when your kids and their irrational beliefs propagate and my kids get derided, supressed, or even killed for simply saying the truth.
Billions have lived under the boot of religion. Billions are still living under it. You think that's right? I don't. I think that indoctrinating your children, or anyone elses, is morally wrong; and socially dangerous.
Re:Evolution? Scientific Achievement of 2005? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Scientifically proven" is an oxymoron. No scientific theory has ever been proved. Ever.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1, Insightful)
About the evolution theory being supported by observation, again you are saying that if something is not observable by the senses (and the instruments which are extensions of it) then that thing has no reality. By this definition, yes all religion is unscientific - but to me that's not a negative thing. You seem to have the additional connotation that whatever is not science or outside the purview of science is simply not an acceptable method to understand this universe - sounds rather unscientific by to me to exclude something by definitional fiat.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Er, no it doesn't. ID makes no claim other than an unidentified supreme being started the ball rolling. However, ID doesn't even provide evidence to support that such a being exists. It starts by assuming a being does exist. That's not a prediction. That's a statement of fact unsupported by anything.
Further, if one is to believe what ID supporters say, "Things look they were designed", then that is patently false. Just because something looks like it was designed does not mean it was. I submit for your viewing pleasure the underwater rocks of Bimini. [google.com]
For decades people assumed that they were a road from a long ago civilization. However, once the rocks were tested they were found to be naturally occuring phenomenon.
ID makes no testable predictions. Even the Discovery Institute, the driving force behind this farce, provides no evidence to support their claim. None. All they do is try to point out supposed flaws in evolution, flaws which are repeatedly answered and shown not to be true but they keep spouting the same lies in the hopes the public is too stupid to realize they're lying.
In fact, you do the same thing. You keep saying there are flaws yet provide nothing to support your claim. That's not how the scientific method works. If you think your idea deserves attention you have to provide evidence to support your claim. To date no one, and I mean no one, has ever provided any evidence to support ID. They immediately turn around and say, "Well evolution doesn't provide evidence for 'X'" where X is whatever the flaw of the week is. Trying to poke holes in a current theory does not make your claim valid.
ID isn't science. Get over it.
Re:lol. political awards anyone? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
The other assumes an Unintelligent Designer instead- Random Chance.
Most mutations are the result of damage caused by disease, radiation, and transcription errors. Combining genes (as in sexual reproduction) can also produce unexpected effects. None of these rely on a designer, and "randomness" is an essential feature of our universe (per quantum mechanics).
And yet, the way it's been taught in the last 50 years- it does rely on one. It relies on random mutation as a driving creator. So does ID by the way- except in that case it's God doing trial and error testing. Without a creator, intelligent or unintelligent, pushing change- both ID and evolution would find a stable state and the changes would simply stop.
Except randomness is not an agent, it's a concept. It implies someone with intent is responsible for our evolution. Natural processes have no intent.
And why would God need to do trial-and-error testing to begin with? I should think He'd already know what to do.
Evolution never stops because the environment is not stable. Natural selection occurs in response to an ever-changing environment. If a group of people were isolated in an environment devoid of any change--in terms of population, knowledge, climate, anything--they would only evolve to optimally survive in that environment, then stop. We do not live in such a world.
Nope- because God is no more complex than the concept of a random and indeterministic universe. The two concepts are equally complex.
But randomness is observed, as we see the lack of a pattern. You can't observe God, which makes the idea useless to science.
Incorrect- without that motivating layer, whether intelligent as in ID or random as in evolution, there's no way for natural selection to happen. Life in the universe as we know it would reach a steady state- and never again evolve.
See my statements above about constantly-changing environments.
Then the idea of a random, indeterministic universe, which is ALSO a monotheistic, or maybe a better word would be ANTI-theistic, dogma, should not be injected into that realm either- in which case you can't teach evolution. The basic theory *does* require a motivator- the only argument is over what that motivator is.
I don't understand how the lack of mention of God makes something anti-theistic. At best, it makes it agnostic--it does not know if a God exists, nor does it attempt to prove one.
The burden of proof is on Intelligent Design to show us why evolution could only have happened with the aid of a Designer. ID proponents have yet to provide such evidence, while evolution has demonstrated amply that random mutation results in natural selection, without the need for a higher entity guiding the process.
As I said before, ID assumes a being with intent. Natural selection does not. And don't confuse random input with random output. The results of evolution are anything but random, which is the whole point of natural selection.
Re:Slashdot Under Siege.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, for that matter, so does Evolution, which is based entirely on observations, hypothesis and conclusions. So by this set of completely arbitrary and capricious rules, which are DIFFERENT from the 5 given for the previous poster, Evolution is not science and should not be taught as science, and neither should biology, quantum mechanics, economics, psychiatry....you get the picture.
The argument to me is about turning the clock back 300 years, and placing society back under the boot of the first and second estates, or their nearest cultural equivilants.
You mean kind of like you do when you allow sciences such as biology to be taught as fact? All you've done is replace the church council with peer-reviewed journals.
Of Course It's Political (Score:2, Insightful)
There is nothing wrong with that, in fact if you have a weak team in a sports league, the other teams in terms of PR will say good things about that team and try to get the fans out. ID got a boot from the courts this week, but I don't think anyone thinks that will kill the issue. The sides are still on the field and the thinking people have to say "go team!".
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution says nothing about the origin of life on Earth. It does provide for the possibility of abiogenesis, and there are many theories as to how this work, but they aren't part of evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory simply tells us that organisms change (because their DNA changes) over time in response to their environment, and that the primary two mechanisms of this change are variation and natural selection.
Thus, evolutionary theory *is* testable, even in a lab -- you can take a fast-breeding species like the common fruit fly, apply artifical selective pressures, and watch the allelle frequencies[1] shift in real time compared to control groups. Dog breeding is another example; humans use a the natural mechanisms of evolution, but add in their own constraints in the selection and variation departments.
If you could prove, experimentally, that some other mechanism accounted for this; or even that it wasn't the combination of selection and variation that prompted observed shifts in allelle frequencies, then you would easily be able to disprove evolutionary theory as it currently stands, and would open up new realms in modern Biology.
Intelligent Design, on the other hand, says absolutely nothing about any of this; instead, it makes a claim about the origin of life that is by definition unfalsifiable, as it is vacuously true. Beyond this, discussion of ID as science is moot, because falsifiability is a prerequisite for ANYTHING to be considered a scientific theory. Want to prove me wrong? Give me a test scenario where ID can be invalidated through experimental results; after all, I just gave you one for evolution.
[1] For the non-genetically inclined reader:
Allelles are, if you will, defined points on the strand of DNA. Each group of allelles governs a set of physical traits, and each group of allelles can be populated by different genes, giving rise to different traits. For example, a single allelle governs the RH factor of your blood, so depending on what gene gets stuck in that allelle, which is determined by your parents' genetics, you are either RH+ or RH-. Since these points are well-defined, and produce physically observable characteristics, it is relatively easy to see the genetic change in a population over time, and link that change back to changes in the way the allelles are populated.
To the genetically inclined: I know this is a simplistic explanation, but I think it's adequate for the purpose of this post.
Re:Slashdot Under Siege.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because some people have been murdered in the name of religion, religion should be abolished? Does that mean because some people have been murdered in the name of freedom, freedom should be abolished? Slaves were kept in the name of cotton, so cotton should be eliminated? Maybe we should talk about eugenics, which was accepted science at the beginning of the 20th century.
Your claim that indoctrinating children is always wrong is even more ludicrous. What do you think I'll be doing when I teach my children that stealing is wrong, or that driving on the right side of the road is right, or that all men are created equal? That's flat out indoctrination. Of course, so would be teaching them that stealing is right, or that driving on the right side of the road is wrong, or that some men are worth less because they've got more melanin.
What do you think you're doing to your kids when you teach them to stamp out religion everywhere they find it? What's up next, you're going to start burning bibles?
More importantly, you haven't addressed the central point: atheism is a belief system, just like theism is. You can't prove there is no god. So all you're trying to do is make sure everyone agrees with your belief system. Explain to me again how this is better than some theist trying to make sure you agree with his?
And don't give me the "because I'm right and he's wrong" argument until you can prove that there is no god.
This is why much of the world these days either enjoys or is moving towards religious tolerance. Which means I can be Catholic, and you can be atheist, and we no one has to get nailed to anything.
Then religion doesn't need to muddy the waters around unrelated issues. We can discuss, say, heliocentrism without me dismissing you because you're atheist or you dismissing me because I'm not. You, on the other hand, are going to press on with religious intolerance. The only reason people like you aren't just as damaging now as the Roman Catholic Church was centuries ago is because there aren't enough of you in charge.
And thank God for that.
People don't take meat seriously enough (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the dismissive phrase "just meat" implies that there isn't much to it. In fact you can implement some incredibly cool things using "just meat". Intelligent life, for example.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, repeat after me: Mutation means nothing. It is an insignifigant force that basically means Jack to evolution. Mutations usually die off, and rarely get to reproduce.
The two key mechanisms for evolution are variation and selection.
Variation means is that in every population, there is some degree in the variation of physical traits. Tails vary in length, animals vary in height, there are variations in hair color and patterning, and so on.
Selection means that some members of a population are, for some reason or other, better suited at producing a larger number of viable offspring. This could be because they are more attractive to mates, or because they are better at getting food, or maybe they are better at defending against predators. Whatever the reason, some members produce more kids than others, in spite of the hazards of their surroundings.
Now, here's the kicker, and how this all works. When two members of a population mate, their genes basically get mixed together to produce the offspring. While the mixing is random, the genes supplied aren't, and so the offspring will tend to enjoy the same genetic benefits that the parents did -- when two tall people produce kids, their children tend to be tall. Likewise, when two members of a population have a lot of luck in producing kids, then their kids will likely also have good luck, and so their genes tend to spread more.
This is how evolution works. There's no magic, nothing more than a statistical shift in genetically-determined traits, which occurs in response to natural selective pressures.
Falsifiability (Score:3, Insightful)
The social problem with ID is that the people doing the pushing are religious bigots. Make no mistake about it. They're as open-minded as the taliban. They don't care whether it's scientific. They're not interested in a dialog or the truth. They have a message for you and their only interest in you depends on your acceptance of that message.
In mostly non-Christian nations... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm just curious now how other religions interact with the idea of evolution. What about India's Hindu population? What do they think?
Sort of off topic, I guess. But hey. Maybe someone here who's bilingual will know.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Replacing one religion with another doesn't help a bit. Quantum Mechanics is not predictible, and thus fails at the test of being a science by your own rules.
I'll assume you don't know much about quantum mechanics. QM tells us that while the motion of particles is random at a certain scale, their interactions ARE predictable. In fact, that is what QM does: it describes the interactions of particles. (I'll avoid a tangent discussing the school of thought that there is no such thing as particles, but rather a universe of intricate power-relationships. Google is your friend.)
A lack of intent is as much a theological concept as having intent; logically the two are completely equivalent. They do carry an emotional difference however, which is my theory on why the disparate concepts arose.
Lack of intent is not theological, it is observational. The randomness we have seen implies a lack of intent. If we saw patterns, we might assume intent. But the inputs to evolution are random. More specifically, they are random variations of a pattern. Natural selection culls disadvantageous mutations.
I think the real reason people get so hot and bothered about evolution is that it indicates we're Just Animals. There is no miraculous proof of a Creator. Evolution essentially tells us we aren't special, just lucky and adaptive. Some people can't deal with this, and have to believe in invisible men in the sky to give their lives meaning. I have no problems with people doing that, as long as they don't try to make everyone else believe the same way.
Evolution, as it is now, ignores theistic issues. Is there a God? Is there not a God? Evolution doesn't care, and doesn't attempt to prove it either way. This is the point IDers miss. Apparently, they can't leave well enough alone, but feel injecting a Higher Power into it is necessary. I don't think it is, and neither does most of the scientific community, or the US federal government.
Why would he know how to be a parent any more than the rest of us? That's a pretty big assumption you're making as to the definition of the word God.
I assume you're talking about other than the Judeo-Christian God, then. In which case, I might ask you to define "God" as it pertains to you.
Well, that's the other half that drives natural selection certainly. But that doesn't mean you can get rid of the first half. I don't understand that statement. Care to clarify?
Neither can you actually observe randomness, since a random spot is indistinguishable from a larger pattern.
That is actually a worthwhile point. The only way we can deal with that is to continue gathering data until we begin to see a pattern. For the time being, though, we don't see one, so we don't assume one. That's science: explain what you can prove, keep looking into what you can't.
Useless because it fails to identify the cause of the change- it's just another theological argument.
What cause have we failed to identify? If you want to talk about causes, then what caused God?
But that's the problem isn't it: it does attempt to prove the lack of existance of one.
No, it doesn't. The only implication is that God is not required to understand the explanation. Do you need God to understand how gravity works? Do you need God to do trigonometry? No. So, why do you need God to explain the evolution of life which, while we like to romanticize it, is essentially the cooperation of numerous chemical machines toward their mutual survival? I know most people like to wax poetic about what life is, but in terms of physics and chemistry, life may be complicated, but it is not impossible to comprehend by any means.
Too bad random mutation is in and of itself a higher entity, or else by occam's razor that would be true.
Only because you seem interested in anthropomorphizing it, which is a mistake. "Intelligence" itself is a construct. You have to get beyond such things.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
And so it is nothing but a waste of time in science class.
Re:lol. political awards anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
Evolution is not the 'big bang' theory. Evolution doesn't give two shits about cosmic expansion, collapse, black holes or matter/energy interactions. It doesn't care where Earth came from, how long it had been there, or what color the sky was when the Flying Spaghetti Monster first set the amino acids rolling.
Evolution is about the trends of change among individual organisms. That's IT. There are other theories about all the other events, but they are off-topic.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as Galileo, I am unaware of any "evolutionist*" zealot that have locked up and threatened to kill Michael Behe if he did not stop his assertions.
As for myself, I cannot say that I believe in evolution. I say I hold the opinion of evolution. And frankly, those stickers are absolutely redundent as suggested. It is a shame that the real principles of scientific inquery are not better taught.
*Evolutionists -- Perhaps I should get on the horn with some slick term maker and start calling a section of the population "Evolution-deniers"
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Observed phenomona often are. We observe heritable traits in populations changing over time. Do you also wish to have the Earth circling the sun taught as a "theory". Beyond that, the whole Kansas stunt demonstrates a purposeful attempt to confuse two usages of the word "theory". How is a bit of propagandistic wordplay a legitimate expression of the nature of a major scientific line of inquiry?
Maybe someday you ought to vist PubMed and look at the abstracts. Evolutionary theory, like all theories, is in constant development. Why would you think differently?
Which is in and of itself rubbish. The basic outlines of the Modern Synthesis are far less complex to outline than the intracies of the cosmology.
Even if your accusation were correct, Intelligent Design isn't science. It does not mean any of the requirements of a scientific theory. It is a legalistic stunt meant to sneak Creationism past the Establishment Clause. There is no research program into ID. It offers no predictions, no means of testing. The single known publication in a journal was through a nasty little editorial trick. In short, no scientists are doing any research into ID. Not even Behe is submitting ID to any journals, and most of the "work" on ID is in fact, oddly enough, being done by people who aren't scientists at all.
So you're right, I don't want my kids taught a rewording of Paley's old watchmaker argument. There is nothing new in ID, so even in that part of your argument, you get it wrong. As Judge Jones recognized, ID is nothing more than a restating of Creationism. Hell, even the only actual ID textbook was simply a search-and-replace of Creationism with ID.
Re:Most people don't know what ID is (Score:2, Insightful)
Why the -ism suffix?
Where are the Newtonists? Galileoists? Einsteinists?
And what exactly is new about it?
It is not an ideology, as some would have you believe. It is well founded science.
Re:Hmm...Can you say "String Theory"? (Score:3, Insightful)
A more subtle definition appears to be needed. Falsifiability is needed for many purposes, but it doesn't seem (to me) to be the bedrock of what is scientific.
Re:Slashdot Under Siege.... (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet, I believe not one of those things, while simultaneously being Catholic. Meanwhile, I'm sure I can find plenty of non-religious totalitarian regimes that do believe some of them.
If I, a secular person, said any of these things to anyone, especially a child, I would be thrown in jail. There's is clearly a line somewhere that is being crossed daily, using religion as a legal and constitutional loophole.
No, you probably wouldn't, at least not in the U.S. (with the possible exception of your "infidels should all be killed" bit, which might qualify as actionable hate speech...whatever that means). If you went ahead and actually started castrating young girls, that would be a different issue entirely, of course.
Prove something that is by definition unprovable? That's a derisible statement. It's even lower down on the scale than people who believe in UFO's, vampires and ghosts. At least they make attempts to subject their beliefs to science and experiment. I might not be right, but you're certainly standing on shaky ground.
I have to admit, I don't know what "derisible" means, and I can't tease out of its context what you mean by it (and I don't get any hits on google define:), so I can't really rebut it.
You do seem to take offense at being asked to do exactly what you're asking the religious to do, though. You deny the existence of God because I can't prove it...yet you ask me to accept the non-existence of God despite your inability to prove it. The fact that you can't prove it either way is exactly my point.
You believe something you can't prove, that God doesn't exist. My point is that I do not understand how this is conceptually any different than anyone else believing something he can't prove. Why is your unprovable belief superior to mine?
I am intolerant of injustice, and I see many people perpetuating injustice in the name of religion.
Hey, fancy that, I'm also intolerant of injustice. You know, injustices like attacking people for their unprovable beliefs because they don't agree with your unprovable beliefs. Like dismissing the opinions, thoughts, intelligence, and very worth of people because they don't agree with your unprovable belief system.
I'm not going to start a crusade, but I will speak my mind.
Good for you. Keep speaking your mind. Right up until you start claiming I shouldn't be able to speak my mind (you know, like claiming that teaching my children is evil and immoral), I'm fine with that.
And the only reason "people like me" are not as damaging as religious leaders in the past is because democracy and the rule of law hold sway in our society.
Funny how you dismiss your atheistic religious intolerance as made benign by democracy and the rule of law, while simultaneously assuming that theistic religious intolerance can't be made benign the same way. Again, it intrigues me how much better your unprovable belief is than everyone else's unprovable beliefs.
[Democracy and the rule of law] are coming under attack from the kind of people that promote ID.
Ignoring the hint of melodrama, you're right, they are. Of course, you might want to consider that the set of all people who adhere to ID is not the same as the set of all people who aren't atheists before you resume your little tirade.
Re:Most people don't know what ID is (Score:3, Insightful)
metaphysics = not observable
metaphysics = not testable
metaphysics = not falsifiable
metaphysics = not science
Once again...
metaphysics = not science
Say it again...
metaphysics = not science
No one has said that you cannot discuss ID in a comparative religion or philosophy class. These are the classes for metaphysical discussions, not the biology classes.
One more time...
metaphysics = not science
Got it yet?
metaphysics = not science
Re:Hmm...Can you say "String Theory"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Most people don't know what ID is (Score:4, Insightful)
I think this statement with regards to evolution is not correct. True it is unplanned and random, but the process, as a process is not unguided. Each creature evolves with its evironment as a guide.
Imagine some organism in a world full of oxygen and very little carbon dioxide. Let's say this organism has three offspring (A), (B) and (C). (A) is just like the original organism. (B) uses more carbon dioxide. (C) uses more oxygen and less carbon dioxide. (A) will continue just as the original organism did, (B) will be worse off, and (C) will be better off. Thus (C) and its offspring will be better suited to live in the environment.
The guide is the world the organisms live in. That world may have been created randomly. Each particular mutation may arise randomly. But the process of evolution for each species is guided by the environment of that species.
You also say that life is a statistical anomoly. This seems nontrivially related to the inverse gambler's fallacy [wikipedia.org]. Further, there are hundreds of billions of solar systems. Many of them probably have planets (we have already found some, I suspect we will find that solar systems are more and more likely as we gain the ability to see such things). If the odds of life forming on its own is, let's say, 100,000,000,000 to 1 against (which seems very generous to the people who think life is unlikely, given experiments with the common elements which form the building blocks of life and lightning), and there are 100,000,000,000 planets. On average, there will be life somewhere. Further, the only people that will notice will be from that planet (because there won't be life anywhere else!). They may think themselves extremely special and favored by the universe. They would be wrong.
If you're going to claim that basic life (single celled organisms, let's say) may occur reasonably often but in order to evolve there needs to be guidance in the mutation process, I'm just going to claim that the right environment needs to be in place to encourage mutations with the appropriate features. And given the mutations I can speculate with some accuracy (or at least, historically we have been able to) about the conditions at the time which made such mutations useful. This makes my theory bear extra fruit while you simply put some being in and say "it did it", and that tells us nothing extra. So even if the theories were otherwise equivalent in terms of their predictive power, I can predict things about the environment after the fact, and you cannot. This seems to be an extra point in favor of my theory all other things being equal, which, obviously I don't think they are.
Re:Most people don't know what ID is (Score:3, Insightful)
dan_sdot wrote:
The real problem--primitive superstitious beliefs aside--is that people think that ``order'' can never come from ``randomness.'' Which, of course, is pure bullshit.
Take a heaping handful of marbles and toss them purely randomly into a shoebox. Hey-presto! Order from chaos!
Or, if you like, drop enough bowling balls onto a beach, close enough to each other, that they start to pile upon each other. Once again, order spontaneously arises from chaos--no matter how randomly you add the balls to the pile.
It's the exact same reason why crystals are so pretty, why large astronomical bodies are (essentially) spherical...and why life exists. In one word, ``entropy.''
If a state with higher entropy--and, therefore, one that's more stable--is more ordered than an alternative state with lower entropy, over time, the more ordered state will predominate. And, of course, local conditions will play a huge role in what's more stable. Those marbles in the box will take one configuration if the box has right angles to the edges, and another if the edges are round....
Really and truly, that old chestnut about the puddle being fascinated that it exactly fits the shape of the footprint is spot-on.
Cheers,
b&
Of course, the other big problems are that people have no fucking clue just how long a billion years is, or how large and diverse the Earth is. Start with any ludicrously improbable number you want to put on abiogenesis, and multiply that by a billion years and a third of a billion square miles of surface and a third of a billion cubic miles of ocean...and by the billions of solar systems in the galaxy and the billions of galaxies in the universe...and I guarantee you, your answer is greater than 1. b&
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Dog breeding for specific traits is an example of Intelligent Design using evolution (specialization and variation) as the methodology and having Intelligent Designers (i.e. human breeders) guiding those traits. I don't have a problem with the idea of limited intelligent design. We as humans are doing it now with genetic engineering on plants and developing cloning techniques on animals.
There are at least two big problems with Intelligent Design as proposed by the religious right.
#1) The only currently scientifically observed "intelligent design" are the activities of human beings (breeding, genetic engineering),hardly GOD or supernatural beings -- although such techniques might seem supernatural to cavemen.
#2) When you try to use Intelligent Design as the origin of species you get into a recursive loop. The Intelligent Designer of man is was obviously too complex to occur naturally so he must have been created by an previous Intelligent Designer.... and so on. Like the argument that the world is a flat disc carried on a turtle... what is the turtle carried on? "IT'S TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN". Anyway. eventually you need the ORIGINAL-UNPROVEABLE-SUPER-DESIGNER (i.e. God) to explain things away.
I believe only in micro-ID (haha - kinda like ID's proposed "micro-evolution) which I currently see being carried out by man right now and quite possibly extended to what we'd currently consider "God-Like" in the future, but barring further evidend, I will not believe in full-blown ID as the origin of all species (macro-ID with a supernatural being) until someone shows me the bottom of the stack of turtles.
And they are the lucky ones (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.
Feel free to take four minutes and eight seconds to learn precisely how the human eye probably evolved [pbs.org].
If you can handle the four minutes and eight seconds, perhaps you'd be willing to do some reading about how a bacterial flagellum could form without a designer [arn.org].
I'm also sure you've heard the name Behe before. Did you know that in 2001 Michael Behe admitted that his work had a "defect" and does not actually address "the task facing natural selection." Futhermore, irreducible complexity is rejected by the majority of the scientific community. The main concerns with the concept are that it utilises an argument from ignorance, that Behe fails to provide a testable hypothesis, and that there is a lack of evidence in support of the concept. As such, irreducible complexity is seen by the supporters of evolutionary theory as an example of creationist pseudoscience and amounts to a "God of the Gaps [meta-library.net]" argument.
Can ID answer the following questions?
If you can't answer the last one at the very least, stop reading now. Go back to the link above, click on it, and spend the four minutes and eight seconds educating yourself.
The point to those questions is that NONE of them can be answered with ID. Can't be predicted with. Can't be tested with. None. Zero.
But do you know what can? Evolution, every one of them.
That said, while you accuse others of not understanding what ID actually is, I contend that you do not understand what evolution is.
First of all, the article this discussion is linked to references how scientists have learned new "specifics of how life evolved from a scientific point of view..."
Second, evolution has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with how life was created on what was once only a molten planet. Nothing. At all. Evolution is the transition -- of a population -- from one form of life to others forms of life over (usually long periods of) time.
Creation of life where there is no life is what is known as abiogenesis [talkorigins.org], not evolution. Now stop what you're doing! I can see you reaching for that reply button and Googling for references to the Miller-Urey experiments from the 1950s.
Stop it! You didn't even read that abiogenesis link, did you? I didn't think so. Nothing I can say can convince you to if your mind is already made up (read: clouded by mindless dogma). However I will leave you with one thing so that you can look it up yourself and do the research.
Abiogenesis experiments conducted by Dr. Sidney Fox. Don't even b
Re:And the winner for 2006 is... (Score:2, Insightful)
- the earth is young, probably around 6000 years old
- God created all "kinds" of animals within 6 evening-morning days (fish vs. birds vs. land mammals vs. humans, etc.)
- the earth was devastated by a global flood early in its history
- all humans descended from a single couple known in the English Bible as Adam and Eve
[...]
If it could be shown that any one of these propositions does not hold, then Biblical creationism would crumble.
Please present a single peer reviewed publication which scientifically supports any of these silly claims. The common ancestor one is still up in the air but you'll find that it goes back far more than 6k years.
Have I just been trolled?
Re:So this must mean that Scientists have ... (Score:3, Insightful)
And speaking of eyes, how come we got ripped off in the eye department? Octopi do not have the blind spot you and I have. There are species of shrimp who can see colors we can't even imagine as they have six different color sensors compaired to our three. Bees (and other insects) can see into the ultraviolet. We can't. An hawk can spot a mouse in the grass from half a mile. Can you even see a dog at half a mile?
And the problem with a theory is? Or do you not know what at theory is? It's not just a collection of wild guesses and half-assed ideas.
Evolution is not a thoery. It is a fact. It happens. It is happenning as we speak. The "theory of evolution" (of which there are several) is our attempt to explain how it is happenning, what makes it work. Not knowing how every part works no more invalidates that it doe shappen than not knowing how the insides of a pocket watch work means it can't keep time or that our incomplete understanding of how gravity works means things will not fall down.
I have to ask, which group of anti-evolutiuonsists do you hail from?
Re:Slashdot Under Siege.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think we're scared so much as confused. Why would someone intelligent believe in an invisible and all-powerful being for whom no evidence exists, and whose existence is so incredibly unlikely? How could someone intelligent, who would would presumably be well-read and therefore be aware of the incredible range of (blatantly silly) things people have professed belief in throughout history, not simply place modern religion in the same category? How can intelligent people, who dismiss out of hand many other superstitions, believe in the most outlandish things? Is it really that hard to get past childhood indoctrination?
Religion is so clearly a means for uneducated people to explain the world around them, as well as a way of wishing the world was not as it is (ie. denying mortality), that it is very hard to see how someone smart could fall for it.
That's what confuses us.
God killed my dog? No - and ID is wrong too (Score:3, Insightful)
The weird suggestion that the human eye is a perfect design and so establishes the existance of God is rather stupid and irrelevent - there are better eyes out there and evolution is a better answer than something stupid like God stuffed up or hates blind people.
Re:Falsifiability (Score:2, Insightful)
No, the Bible doesn't say "God created the Heavens and the Earth in 4037 B.C. on the 27th of January at 3:00pm GMT." But it does give genealogies, "so-and-so begat so-and-so," which can give you a rough estimate if you add them up. If you believe the Bible to be accurate, then 6000 years is a close enough approximation.
A lot of people scoff at the notion that the earth has only been here for 6,000 years, but that's only impossible if you assume life must have taken millions of years to evolve or that various geological formations took millions of years to form [nwcreation.net], or that radiometric dating is never wrong [creationism.org]. Without those assumptions, there's really no reason why 6,000 years couldn't work.
ID opponents claim ID isn't science, because it's not falsifiable. Well, they're right. You can't test it, you can't reproduce it, you can't observe it, you can't prove it. The problem is, you can't really test "evolution" (by which in this case I mean the theory that all life evolved from more primitive species over several million years) either - you can make observations about our current situation, and use conclusions from those observations to predict the results of future experiments, but you can't say that proves how something happened in the past, just because it could happen that way now.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1, Insightful)
Wrong. If I flip 10 coins (random mutation) and discard the ones that come up tails (selection), then I have a set of coins that all show heads. The input was random, the outcome was not.
No, my problem is with the implication of an indeterministic universe
Then I hate to tell you this, but many things in the universe are indeterministic.
Environmetal changes alone are not enough to create a new species- only to exterminate old species.
Incorrect. Speciation has been observed.
My point is that without the cause, you can't actually distinguish evolution from ID- both are equivalent theology, neither is science.
Repeating something doesn't make it true. Sorry.
Who created those genes? The designer. Who brought the parents together? The designer. Who determined the physical laws that determine how every particle in the universe moves? The designer.
Who designed the designer?
At which point you freeze the classroom at what date?
It's not frozen. The problem, which you keep denying in the face of all argument, is that ID is not science because it ignores tghe basic principles of science. Ergo, it should not be taught in a science class.
Re:Hmm... (Score:1, Insightful)
The Penn State Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry.
I didn't say that MOND was "inaccurate". I said that it has not replaced relativity, nor does it account for gravitational dynamics better than does relativity, nor will it ever.
MOND does fine for galactic rotation curves, but it doesn't account for the same breadth of observations as does dark matter. Even if it were better than dark matter, that still doesn't mean that Newtonian dynamics is more accurate than relativity, because (a) the galactic rotation curves due to dark matter are also determined from Newtonian dynamics, (b) relativity is already known to be more accurate than Newtonian mechanics as far as predictions of gravity go: perihelion precession of orbits, gravitational redshift, gravitational light deflection, the Lense-Thirring effect, Shapiro time delay, the Nordtvedt effect, orbital decay due to gravitational radiation, etc. etc., and (c) MOND isn't really Newtonian gravity anyway, that's why it's called "modified".
Now, it is possible that galactic rotation curves may be explained more accurately by a modified theory of gravity akin to MOND than they are by dark matter. (I don't think this is very likely, for a number of reasons, but it's possible.) However, that modified theory must be compatible with relativity in every circumstance in which relativity has been successfully compared with experiment. That is not the case for MOND. Therefore, if you want to save MOND as a fundamental theory, you have to come up with some relativistic gravity theory which reduces to MOND in the weak field, slow motion limit (as general relativity reduces to Newtonian gravity in that limit). Bekenstein [arxiv.org] has proposed such a theory, but it is (a) speculative, (b) hasn't addressed all observational tests, and (c) is more ad hoc than dark matter is generally regarded to be (see this post [google.com] for some reasons). And it still doesn't address the deficiencies of MOND regarding phenomena other than galactic rotation curves.
My original point stands: regardless of the success of MOND, it is not going to replace relativity; as it stands, it is incompatible with all the experiments supporting relativity. At best, it will be subsumed within relativity.
"Give me a fucking break" is an expression of disgust at having the temerity to compare "evolution zealots" to the Church's persecution of Galileo, not condescension.
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
#1) The only currently scientifically observed "intelligent design" are the activities of human beings (breeding, genetic engineering),hardly GOD or supernatural beings
Agreed - there doesn't currently seem to be anything scientifically observable that would necessitate the existence of a supernatural Creator - if we observe something we have no natural explanation for, that doesn't prove it occurs due to supernatural forces, only that we haven't discovered the natural explanation yet. However, the absence of proof does not imply the presence of disproof: just because a natural explanation has been found for most observations, doesn't mean there must be a natural explanation for everything we can ever observe. Still, it's stupid to stop looking for natural explanations just because it's possible there might not be one, especially since history has shown that there usually is.
I believe that God currently chooses not to reveal Himself in a scientifically provable way. Obviously this has not always been the case, and the Bible promises that it will not remain the case forever. In the mean time, I can't prove that God exists, and you can't prove that God doesn't exist. Until God chooses to reveal Himself, the question of whether or not God exists remains outside the realm of science for this reason.
#2) When you try to use Intelligent Design as the origin of species you get into a recursive loop. The Intelligent Designer of man is was obviously too complex to occur naturally so he must have been created by an previous Intelligent Designer.... and so on. Like the argument that the world is a flat disc carried on a turtle... what is the turtle carried on? "IT'S TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN". Anyway. eventually you need the ORIGINAL-UNPROVEABLE-SUPER-DESIGNER (i.e. God) to explain things away.
The Bible says God has always been, and always will be; this becomes much easier to understand once you can grasp the idea that God exists outside of time, and indeed God created time. We exist on a linear timeline moving in one direction; once a moment has passed, it's behind us. I'm not suggestion that God can turn around and go backwards on that line, rather that God is "above" the line - able to look down and see the whole picture at once, able to cause something to happen tomorrow by setting events in motion years ago without being confined to only moving forward or back. God created not only this planet, this galaxy, and all the other galaxies in the universe... but the universe itself, including the entire concepts of time and space, along with physical properties and rules that operate within the universe (e.g. gravity).
So, where does God come from? Does God have a creator? These questions cannot be answered unless God (or someone else, I suppose) chooses to reveal that information, since by definition we cannot explore or observe anything outside of our universe. Personally I don't see much point in guessing. Either God is the original unprovable super Designer you're looking for, or there are more turtles, but if God is our only connection to the world outside our universe, then I don't think it matters; why get hung up on it?
I believe only in micro-ID (haha - kinda like ID's proposed "micro-evolution) which I currently see being carried out by man right now
I really like the name "micro-ID".
and quite possibly extended to what we'd currently consider "God-Like" in the future,
I'm curious as to what you have in mind.
but barring further evidend, I will not believe in full-blown ID as the origin of all species (macro-ID with a supernatural being) until someone shows me the bottom of the stack of turtles.
I hope God chooses to reveal Himself to you (in His usual non-scientifically-observable way) soon, but in the mean time, I commend your skepticism and I encourage you to continue seeking answers.
aaaaaannnnnndd .... no. (Score:3, Insightful)
As the man said, "If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby."
Uh, and what exactly would looking at the pilgrims tell me about the structure of the united states? They lived in the same place a few hundred years earlier, and they were brutal religious zealots; what exactly is looking at them supposed to show me? Just a reminder of how glad I should be that such dogmatic savages had nothing to do with the forming of my nation?Re:And the winner for 2006 is... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:And the winner for 2006 is... (Score:4, Insightful)
And to the second question above, science needs only to describe the natural aspects of the universe. That's what it's for. If you're looking for explanations that include the supernatural, then you need to look to something else because science is the wrong tool for that job. And to force the supernatural into science, is to render it a tool unfit for any job.
Re:And the winner for 2006 is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Politics and academia (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. They are simply recognizing the huge amount of recent work that has immensly increased our understanding of evolution and its mechanisms. You'd be right if they were mearly recognizing the staggering quantity of raw evidence in support of evolution that has accumulated recently, as the quantity was already overwhelming, and is about as signifigant as more evidence in support of gravity. If there were recent comparable increases in the understanding of gravity and it's mechanisms, that would would be worthy of equal note.
1973 when homosexuality was removed from the American Psychological Association's big book of diseases. This decision wasn't made because the members of the APA decided homosexuality suddenly did not meet the definition of diseases
Homosexuality falls under "diseases" exactly as left-handedness falls under "diseases".
it [homosexuality] is still in the book thinly-veiled under the name Gender Identity Disorder)
Bullshit. Homosexuality does NOT fall under Gender Identity Disorder at all. Gender Identity Disorder is an intense and exaggerated desire/belief to *be* the opposite gender, for example a hyperfeminine boy fixated on a desire to get pregnate and have a baby. "Hyperfeminimity" and "hypermasculinity" is maladpative and harmful exaggerated affectation of gender, such as a girl expressing hypermasculine model of aggression and violence, or a boy expressing a hyperfeminine model of passivity.
Your personal distaste for homosexuality notwithstanding, homosexuals express no intellectual infirmity and they are just as capable of productive, sucessfull, fullfilling lives as anyone else (including raising children), and they they cause no more social of physical harm to anyone than anyone else.
If you find sex with men revolting, FINE, don't fuck men. If you find sex with blacks (or asians or whatever) revolting, FINE, don't fuck blacks (or asians or whatever). However that gives you no right to call interracial marriage a "mental illness", and it gives you no right to deny interracial couples the right to marry.
God damnint! These aren't the middle ages anymore. It's un-fucking-believeable that in this day and age we can still have 40% of the population of Ala-fucking-bama vote against interracial marriage, and more than 50% of the population of several states voting to deny marriage rights based on gender. Race, gender, religion, the 14th ammendment of the United States Constitution guarantees equal treatement and nondiscrimination by the government and in the laws. You can no more write a valid law to discriminate on the basis of the gender of marriage applicants than you can write a valid law to discriminate on the basis of the gender or religion of marriage applicants. Yeah, lets ban marriages between Christians and Muslims while we're at it... and ban marriages between Jews and Atheists too.
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Re:Evolution = the new evolved bigotry (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be simliar to the number of scientists who reject the sun being powered by nuclear fusion, and who instead support the "Electric Universe" crap that oddly keeps appearing on Slashdot.
In otherwords the number is essentially zero.
Roughtly 99.9% of professional biologists accept evolution. There is no genuine scientific controversy over evolution. A negligable number of crackpots making arguments and claims that have been reviewed and invalidated by all the the rest of the experts in the field does not make a genuine scientific controversy
Go ahead, check out what fraction of professional biologists reject evolution.
1) life never comes from non-life
I thought we were talking about evolution?
That's like attacking the theory of chemistry because it doesn't explain the origin of elements. The theory of chemistry is perfectly valid science even if we DON'T yet have a strong well supported theory of nuclear fusion to explain the origin of elements.
Evolution explains the behaviour of life once it exists, just as chemistry explains the behaviour of elements once they exist.
The theory of "the origin of life from nonlife" is abiogenesis. Considering that it attempts to address a singular microscoping evend shrouded behind the mists of several billion years, and that it has left no direct trace, it is hardly supprising that it is a poorly developed and poorly supported area of science. And no one is disputing it is poorly developed and poorly supported. However it is a lot better developed and better supported that you realize. However I'm not going to even try to get into it with you. Lets simply agree that poorly developed and poorly supported science has little or no place on a highschool science curriculum. There IS NO FIGHT over the origins of life in or highschools. The all of the fighting is over evolution.
2) explosions don't bring order
ARG! that argument is a pet peeve of mine, and I really hate seeing it (and explaining it) over and over and over and over.
Basically the argument is that the second law of thermodynamics prooves evolution impossible. That is the statistical law that says entropy (disorder) increases. That law only says the average disorder must increase, and it does not apply at all when there is a system with energy flowing through it.
It is quite normal and common for structure and order and complexity and information to spontateously arise out of nature when you have a system with energy flowing through it. In particular the sun is pumping energy into and througha variety of systems on the earth. For example the sun evaporates disordered water molecules into even more disordered and chaotic water vapor, which can then cool and condense as highly ordered complex snowflakes.
Order and structure and complexity out of chaos. The sun metling ice and evaporating water *is* your metaphrical explosion blasting apart the water molecules into random bits of water vapor, and the final outcome of that explosion is an increase in complexity in the final snowflake.
3a) Mutations occur but almost always bring harm
Most mutations are neutral. A population builds up an increasing library of mutations, beneficial ones and neutral ones, and even mildly harmful ones. And in fact evolution would proceed with no trouble even if we assume there were NO beneficial mutations. Each generation mixes and suffles that library of neutral and mildly negative mutations looking for combinations that are valuable. A mutant gene producing a mild toxin on the blood is a negative mutation, and a mutation where the sweat glands leak blood protines onto the skin is negative, leaking out valuable blood protines. However if you combine those two negative mutations you wind up with a frog leaking and building u
Re:And the winner for 2006 is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Since the ones you cited earlier were stated to be dreams, I don't see why I should bother to chase up more. Basically, I don't think the Bible says anything about this; the shape of the planet just is not a matter for theology. You keep stating the Bible says the world is flat, you're the one who has to support that.
One can only see all the Kingdoms if the earth was flat.
Firstly, I think if you saw the hemisphere centred on Israel, you could see all the kingdoms of the earth at that time, except perhaps the Mayans. Secondly, you're assuming light travelled in straight lines. If Satan can lift Jesus up to a mountain, he can refract light to show him the entire world in a Mercator projection (with four corners) if he wants to. Though again, this is most likely meant to be undrstood as a vision rather than objective reality; as to get high enough to see even half the globe would leave Jesus rather short of air to breathe.