The best video of its kind I've seen yet. Learn a thing are two.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO7IT81h200
Printable View
The best video of its kind I've seen yet. Learn a thing are two.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO7IT81h200
excellent
But if you don't know, it has to be god, end of discussion. I mean a theory is only a theory, god wrote the bible, so it is true.
Good video, because it doesn't mock or condescend. I think we (edit: "we" scientists :p) need more of this kind of thing. (+rep)
oh i forgot to rep you lolol
(rectified)
It didn't tell me anything new but I watched it all because it used Rhapsody In Blue.
I don't know why, I could have just listened to the song by itself.
The only time I've ever been genuinely interested in what someone had to say about evolution, the person had a "Dr." in their name, was quite objective and I was sitting in a desk.
Sure, youtube videos inspire quite the boners and back patting, but they don't actually say anything.
Did you actually watch the video, or are you making an assumption? I think this video is exceptional in that it's not like this, and that's why I posted it.
Also, you might have to be a "Dr." to discover this stuff and to expand our knowledge of it, but you don't need a doctorate to understand and communicate the basics of knowledge that has been discovered. Unfortunately, most YouTube videos are unable to do this effectively, but this one succeeds to some degree at least.
lol, it outlined the scientific method; woopty doo.
I think it's important to keep from becoming entrenched in either side.
I mean, who's to say God didn't employ evolution? Certainly not me.
That said, some scientists have made Darwin their personal prophet, and anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot.
The prof I was talking about was wonderfully open minded and listed arguments for and against it, using facts and details the layman wouldn't understand.
My God you're a fucking idiot.
Case in point. You're a fucking idiot.Quote:
I mean, who's to say God didn't employ evolution? Certainly not me.
No, it's my brand of 'shut up you fucking idiot' in action. You fucking idiot.
You don't have to be tolerant of stupidity or of things which are shitty. Anyone who disagrees with the premise of evolution is an idiot -- well, misinformed, certainly, and brainwashed, probably.
And anyone who brings up God in the context of a discussion about science is a fucking idiot and should be told so.
The assumption that an individual who studies science and an individual who believes in a deity have to be mutually exclusive is pig headed, to say the least.
EDIT: Anyway, it's too early to get into a debate with a graduate of Google university, so I'm gonna unsubscribe from this thread and go jerk off to pictures of guns
Uh...
The theory that more-or-less spontaneous mutation in hereditary genetic makeups has caused minor changes from generation to generation and that those changes which were harmful to the survival rate of the creature got those creatures killed off while the ones that promoted survival saw those creatures procreate more and more until the species tree branched out of simple organisms into increasingly complex ones?
Those ones, mostly.
And some others.
In books written by evolutionary biologists.
Well, probably.
Well that's like saying that a scientist who believes in love is hypocritical and I'm sure there are plenty of them.
Although a scientist who believes in a deity without question is very hypocritical.
Well, "love" as a physically motivated experience is perfectly plausible and not unscientific...
Well then you're getting into semantics and 'love' is a very wide concept so let's just not go there.
Also, it's perfectly possible for a scientist to say "I believe in the scientific method AND GOD, even though God is unscientific" but that's no more than acknowledging the fact that they're incompatible.
I'm hypocritical about certain things. It's not necessarily a very bad thing. I'm being matter-of-fact about it, not judgmental.
First of all...
I don't know about the other people in this thread, but this isn't about whether or not God exists. Where did you get that idea, you stupid twat?
Even when I did believe in God, I also believed in and defended evolution. When I first expressed an interest in science as a young child (despite my parents being in the humanities), my conservative Catholic father bought me books on natural history. I didn't even know about the religious debate surrounding evolution until I was like 10.
So again, this has NOTHING to do with whether God does or does not exist.
Let me quote a line for you from the movie, assmunch:Quote:
lol, it outlined the scientific method; woopty doo.
This video is about why creationism is NOT science. People don't understand why it's not, and that's why it has to be differentiated from what IS science. You don't seem to get it that there's lacking a very basic understanding of what is science and what isn't science.Quote:
Let's face it: most people don't know that much about science or what goes on in the scientific community
Just like some stupid physicists have made Newton their personal prophet, and anyone who disagrees with his theory of gravitation is an idiot? I know, why can't people keep an open mind and consider other alternative, untested, and completely refuted theories?Quote:
That said, some scientists have made Darwin their personal prophet, and anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot.
So then what's the use of having these facts and details communicated to the lay community if they can't understand it?Quote:
The prof I was talking about was wonderfully open minded and listed arguments for and against it, using facts and details the layman wouldn't understand.
Like I said, I think the basics of how science works, why we should trust scientists, and the basics of how evolution works and what proof we have for it can all be understood and grasped by the lay person.
The simple fact is that we don't understand every single detail about natural history or about the mechanism of evolution.Quote:
The simple fact is that there are things wrong with the whole evolution thing.
The simple fact is that there are things right with the whole evolution thing.
The simple fact is that we don't understand everything about most things. The simple fact is that if we did, scientists wouldn't have much to do, now would they?
Yes, our understanding of evolution is incomplete. Likewise, our understanding of quantum mechanics is incomplete, as it is fundamentally incompatible with general relativity. However, I don't see people saying that it is "wrong" like they are saying evolution is wrong.
There is one thing that is correct to say: evolution is the only way that we can even begin to explain all the empirical evidence we've accumulated. We don't understand it completely. We're getting better at understanding how it works.
But a lack of current understanding is not a fundamental "problem" with the theory, as you say it is.
Let me just emphasize one thing here:
I don't give a flying fuck if people believe in whatever supernatural stuff they want to believe in. But when they start to attack science...
...it's personal.
See guys, that is the beautiful thing about science. It is a strength that creationist try to turn into a flaw. Science adapts to new evidence. We achieve new evidence based on new discoveries, or discovering something new due to new technology. Just because something can not be entirely explained at this time does not mean it can not be explained, and must have been a god or deity that did it. If that was the case we still wouldn't know why it rains and where fire comes from. We take evidence and known facts and form a conclusion based on available knowledge. They use this as a flaw, saying we can "change our stance" on things, and that we don't understand everything. True, but that is a strength, scientist take new evidence if it becomes available to form a new hypothesis, if a creationist comes across new evidence they mangle it to fit their conclusion.
Creationist come to a conclusion, and use pseudo-science and false logic to make the evidence "meet" their answer, and not the other way around. Anytime you are trying to make the evidence fit the conclusion, instead of making a conclusion based on the evidence is pure insanity.
The one thing I don't understand is that a lot of religious people are so entrenched in their idea, that they come up with "reasons" why we heathen science based logical people do what we do... anything from being possessed by the devil to living in sin and not wanting to admit it. It's like talking to a wall, or a magic 8-ball, they are unable to accept new information. If scientific evidence truly showed a higher deity, such as the Christian God, that would be the common consensus. They act as if we would turn down eternal bliss if the evidence was there that it existed.
So I guess bacon ops missed the fact that the video's main point was explaining why creationism and "intelligent design" are non-scientific and why their proponents arguments for inclusion in science curricula are intellectually dishonest? And instead he thought it was trying to disprove God's existence or something?
EDIT: Bacon ops, if you wander back into this thread, could you please tell us some of the things that are "wrong with the whole evolution thing"?
It's the unfortunate conflation of the support of science and evolution with support of atheism. There is nothing incompatible between evolution and a belief in god any more than there is between a belief in a round earth and a heliocentric solar system and a belief in god.
And given his earlier statements, I'm sure bacon ops would simply cop out by saying he doesn't have a doctorate in biology, so he can't say what's wrong with evolution per se.
An organism with n chromosomes cannot procreate with an organism with n + x number of chromosomes.
You can only fit so much new information on a single chromosome before it would be too much, and too prone to malfunction.
Now, I agree natural selection is proven, etc... but where in time in the development of new species, and how praytell, is the new chromosome formed?
The probability of a servicable new species of organism (A) randomly being selected for is already slim, correct?
Add to that that another organism(B) must contain a relatively similar "trait" that has to have resulted in the same number as chromosomes as the original, and the probabilities become ridiculously small.
Think of it this way:
Chromosomes are like lego blocks.
The parents each contribute n number of blocks.
If one parent somehow aquires a new trait, which results in n+1 number of chromosomes, as opposed to the species' current n, then it the blocks won't fit, and a viable offspring is highly unlikely.
get it?
http://io9.com/354136/first-proof-th...ic-engineering
Quote:
For years, farmers have been growing genetically-engineered cotton plants that exude an insecticide known as Bt. But now, a pest called the bollworm moth has evolved a resistance to Bt — and the altered bugs have already spread across part of the southern United States. This is the first-known example of bugs evolving resistance to an insecticide in the wild. It proves that natural selection can outrun genetic engineering in terms of its ability to transform a species quickly.
Oh hey look, evolution. A bug adapted to it's environment to ensure it's own survival... god must have did it. :shifty:Quote:
Another example of natural selection working this fast can be seen among elephants, who were hunted for their ivory tusks in the ninteenth and twentieth centuries. Over the course of a century, a "tuskless" mutation in a few elephants spread across the population like wildfire. While only 1% of elephants were born without tusks in 1930, in 1998 15% of female and 9% of male elephants were.
That's probably just a plasmid at work, dude.
It's been happening for a long time.
MRSA, anyone?
Developing resistance to a toxin or insecticide is a far cry from growing a new chromosome by chance, then finding another individual who has the exact same mutation and getting viable offspring.
EDIT: it's not even a plasmid: it's just a promoter and a single gene that causes the toxin to be produced in thuringeniuses.
All the bugs have to do is figure out a way to nullify the toxin crystal or avoid uptaking it. Not a big deal.
Yeah, it's natural selection.
In the first sentence of your post, you say that two organisms with different numbers of chromosomes "cannot" procreate. Then, in the end of your post, you say that they can procreate but that a viable offspring is unlikely. Which is it?
I'll save you the effort: It's the second one. You were quite wrong when you said, early in your post, that different numbers of chromosomes prevent organisms from procreating. Organisms with different numbers of chromosomes can and do reproduce sexually and yield viable offspring. You are correct, however, insofar as viable offspring are often less likely when the parents have a mismatched number of chromosomes. That can indeed cause a problem. But of course, as any intelligent person should realize, "unlikely" isn't the same as "impossible". Bear in mind that we're talking about huge numbers of organisms mating over huge expanses of time. Even something that's "highly unlikely" to occur in any given single case becomes somewhat more likely when you give it a hundred billion chances. And in fact in many cases it's not that unlikely; it can be quite easy for organisms with different numbers of chromosomes to produce offspring that are not infertile.
As for how and when the chromosome count changes during speciation, that's no mystery either. The process of chromosomes breaking (or fusing, for that matter) is fairly well understood. In the case of breaking apart, it happens during mitosis when chromosomes with duplicated centromeres are pulled in opposite directions by the spindle fibers.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...osome_numb.php
Here's a site with a pretty easy-to-follow explanation, if you can stomach taking a science lesson from a gol'durned liberal atheist. I can't help noticing that you mocked gwahir for allegedly having a shallow grasp of the topic... but then when asked to elaborate on your objections to evolutionary theory, you chose such an elementary and easily-answered question as "where do the new chromosomes come from, huh?!"
Where did you think they come from... the invisible Hand of the Designer reaches into cell nuclei when it's time for speciation to occur and magically inserts the right number of new chromosomes?
"Can't" as in 5 trillion monkeys pounding on typewriters can't write Romeo and Juliet.
So your contention is that new chromosomes found in new species are formed by screw ups in Anaphase?
EDIT: also, meiosis is the word you meant to use.
DOUBLE EDIT: SHIT, I forgot about Robertson.
Hmm, I guess I was wrong.
The point I'm making is that I observed a problem with it, and created a hypothesis on my own.
I didn't google my facts and then defend them like a religious zealout on the internet.I'm not scared to admit I was wrong though, because it was a genuine problem that apparently has a solution, albeit still an iffy one. (it's too easy to say A+N is gonna be fine when in reality there's probably 50,000 Kbase pairs in each letter.)Quote:
But when they start to attack science...
...it's personal.
HOWEVER,
I still think the whole, "over huge periods of time" and "millions of generations" is a crutch that proponents need to get off of. If something is ridiculously improbable, but it looks like it happened, say so.
Wish I had a class with that guy.
No, this is wrong. You are making stuff up. You are pulling probabilities out of your ass to try and pretend like you know what you're talking about, but you don't. Successful procreation by two organisms with different numbers of chromosomes is not as unlikely as you are pretending it is.
So your counterargument is "LOL"? Do yourself, and all of us, a favor: When you're trying to argue a point, let's have a bit less "Lol hey guys im on the internet" and a bit more "actually addressing the issue".Quote:
Originally Posted by bacon ops
Yes, new chromosomes are formed due to chromosome breakage, and a major cause of that is chromosomes with duplicated centromeres breaking during mitosis. And it works the other way too; e.g. different species of rodents have different numbers of chromosomes due to centromere fusion (this is pretty well-documented). Honestly, if you want to know more about this stuff (and you definitely should know more before you try to have arguments like this), go pick up any decent cytogenetics text and give it a read. You're not the first person to wonder where new chromosomes come from, you're not the first person to think they've cleverly spotted a hole in evolutionary theory by wondering where new chromosomes come from, and you're not the first person to get shut down when it turns out that the origin of new chromosomes during speciation isn't some great mystery. Really, did you seriously think you had spotted some gaping hole in the theory that all the scientists who accept evolution had overlooked?
I never once saw you offer a hypothesis about the origins of chromosomes in speciation ITT. Unless you count your much earlier statement of "Who's to say God didn't employ evolution?"
This is one of the clumsiest attempts I've ever seen to squirm out of having been proven wrong.
I'm making up probabilities? How exactly do you calculate the probability of a new species being formed? You can't.
Dude, my hypothesis was that an organism bearing n chromosomes originated at the same time as the organism with n+1 chromosomes. Any idiot can see that. Whether they were planted here by aliens, formed seperately out of proteins and fireworks, I didn't specify.
Here's the thing; I was sitting in class one day when I used my understanding of procreation to realize that there was something wrong with it.
I didn't simply parrot out a page I googled like you did. I used my brain, and the information gleaned from words written on paper.
It turns out I was wrong, and I'm cool with that. I mean, I knew about Robertson, but I just hadn't made the connection.
I'll give you that, you understand it to a greater degree than I thought you would, but it just gets so old listening to liberal arts majors like Gwahir, Sycld, and simon go on and on about shit they've never bothered to do anything but circle jerk about.
Dude, to you guys, this is just a political issue, and/or extension of your personality.
You won't bother to think about genetics or evolution outside of those boundaries or this thread.
Also, I didn't realize saying, "Shit, I'm wrong" counted as trying to "squirm" my way out of being wrong.
(Okay, I thought you were just here to act as a foil to show how we mere lay people shouldn't even think about science, as none of us can understand anything anyway, but now I realize you're a supporter of creationism.)
And an intelligent design proponen's (i.e. your) answer to this is "It's too hard to hard to understand, so it must be impossible, and thus I'm going to simply throw away all the strong evidence that supports evolution and simply say God dun it according to genesis because it's easier for me to believe?"
Now what the fuck are you talking about?
You're proud of yourself for asking a question you didn't know the answer to and standing up to someone who wasn't as ignorant as you are about what scientists have discovered? What "religious zealotry" are you talking about? He knew or found the answer and explained it to you.
And what the fuck hypothesis are you fucking talking about here? I didn't read a hypothesis, just a proud declamation of ignorance.
It's good that you admitted you were wrong. It's moronic that you then say that you're the better one here for lacking knowledge.
Jesus Christ. That's a crutch even though there's empirical evidence that these processes did occur over huge periods of times and over millions of generations?Quote:
I'm not scared to admit I was wrong though, because it was a genuine problem that apparently has a solution, albeit still an iffy one. (it's too easy to say A+N is gonna be fine when in reality there's probably 50,000 Kbase pairs in each letter.)
HOWEVER,
I still think the whole, "over huge periods of time" and "millions of generations" is a crutch that proponents need to get off of. If something is ridiculously improbable, but it looks like it happened, say so.
Wish I had a class with that guy.
Also, yes, these exceedingly rare ridiculously improbably events did occur and are what drove speciation.
EDIT: Oh, so this was your "hypothesis":
No you didn't. What you said was that it's "impossible" for an an organism with n chromosomes to evolve from an organism with m chromosomes.
Again, it's good that you admitted you're wrong. I'm just so surprised that you think you're better forQuote:
Here's the thing; I was sitting in class one day when I used my understanding of procreation to realize that there was something wrong with it.
I didn't simply parrot out a page I googled like you did. I used my brain, and the information gleaned from words written on paper.
And everything you know you're "parroting" from lectures and textbooks. See we can play this stupid, immature game too.
This is video vault, right?
The simple truth is that you don't, in actuality, understand the processes at work here to a fraction of the degree that I do.
Sure, it's easy to toss everyone aside and say that they're a stupid "creationist"
The truth is that everyone who supports whatever you want to call intelligent design isn't a fundamentalist christian, and doesn't dismiss everything about evolution.
That's what science is about, dude: asking questions.
It isn't about watching youtube and feeling smug.
I'm saying you're the religious zealout.
You have blind faith in evolution.
It's not a "crutch" if it's true. Do you not understand that the probability of an event occurring is intrinsically linked to the number of opportunities it has to occur? If someone has a one-in-a-million probability of occurring, it's only "ridiculously improbable" if you give it significantly less than a million chances. If you give it a million chances, then "one-in-a-million" is not that improbable at all. And if you give it a billion chances, then it's damned improbable that it won't occur. It's a pretty simple concept.Quote:
Originally Posted by bacon ops
Evolutionary events that have a 1-in-X chance of occurring are ridiculously improbable in any given single case, but that does NOT mean they are ridiculously improbable in the population as a whole, over the evolutionary timescale as a whole.
Right, so I guess that would be a clue to a reasonable person not to make up arbitary claims about that probability, like you did.Quote:
Originally Posted by bacon ops
You do not even know what you're talking about. Just like you made stupid and baseless presumptions about the likelihood of parents with a chromosomal mismatch reproducing, you are now making stupid and baseless presumptions about other people's interest in this issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by bacon ops
But you obviously didn't bother to check and make sure your crackpot theory was correct or even grounded in reality before you stormed into this thread and started acting like you knew what you were talking about. Forming your own hypotheses and ideas is great; but you need to make sure they aren't totally wrong before you try to argue with other people over them.Quote:
Originally Posted by bacon ops
It's really ridiculous that you dreamed up your own theory, never bothered to verify it, and tried to use it in an argument as if it were fact... and now you are trying to act like you are somehow superior to people who actually tracked down the facts and educated themselves before opening their mouths, because those people may have used the internet to do so. It's also ridiculous how you think that if someone gleaned information from words displayed on a screen, that information is somehow inferior to the information that you gleaned from words written on paper... even if they were right and you were wrong. Newsflash: The veracity of facts doesn't depend on whether they were learned from an electronic medium or a printed medium.
Dude, my completely wrong idea had these imbeciles stumped until you googled the shit out of it. :)
You can say it's not true, but it is.
You can't learn kung fu from Rush Hour, and you can't learn Genetics on the internet.
You can't back someone into a corner by saying, "Where's your dissertation on your new hypothesis" either. Oh wait, yes you can.
Il est Video Vault, n'est-ce pas?
Well do you have "blind faith" in quantum mechanics, in gravity, in relativity?
You have to question ALL of these theories and listen to the ALL the alternatives. Otherwise, you have "blind faith" too.
And why is it only evolution vs. creationism? Why don't we consider the other dozens and dozens of other alternative theories out there too?
What attitude should I have towards evolution? Why the hell should I believe in intelligent design being at all possible when the ONLY ARGUMENTS THAT I HAVE EVER HEARD IN SUPPORT OF ID ARE ARGUMENTS AGAINST EVOLUTION?
That's the thing: there is no positive empirical evidence that supports ID. None.
You're right about one thing here: everyone who supports creationism isn't a fundamentalist Christian. They are also Muslims, Jews, etc. They all have an agenda whose origins are from a religious viewpoint and not a scientific one.
So here's why I believe in evolution:
1) I might not have a huge knowledge of biology, but I have an intimate knowledge of how science, in general, works.
2) Evolution is supported by the vast majority of biologists. It is the one theory that can explain empirical evidence, the fossil record, etc.
3) Yes, evolution may very well be wrong. But their is not a single theory out there that experts tell us can explain empirical evidence or give a coherent narrative in light of empirical evidence.
4) It's patently obvious that most, if not all, of the arguments put forth by creationists are THOSE THAT REFUTE EVOLUTION, not arguments that show how creationism fits empirical evidence better than evolution.
Finally, I don't give a shit that you know more than I do. The fact is that everything you know was in classroom instruction. So why can't I say that your education in biology wasn't merely indoctrination?
Dieses ist die Video Vault, korrekt?
Bacon Ops I have seen much better trolls than you.
Este é Video Vault, correto?
Это видео- свод, да?
Just for the record, I didn't use Google to discover why you were wrong; I knew why you were wrong as soon as I read your post, because I have a working knowledge of how evolution works. What I used Google for was to find a website that would explain the facts in a way that everyone reading the thread could understand, since providing links to other websites is obviously the only practical way to show other people information in an online discussion. It seems like your automatic assumption about everyone else is that they couldn't possibly know anything about a scientific topic, and if they do demonstrate any knowledge of a scientific topic, then it must be because they Googled it 30 seconds earlier and just parroted what they found. This may come as a shock to you, but you are not the only person in the universe who has ever taken a class or read a book. Every other person besides yourself does not necessarily get 100% of their knowledge from Google on an as-needed basis. My degree isn't scientific, but I do have a strong interest in science, and I read a lot. Consequently, I have some scientific knowledge that wasn't gained via a Google search made for the express purpose of arguing with Intelligent Design advocates on the internet.
Yeah, fuck those assholes who accept well-supported scientific theories without having a degree in the relevant field! Only a physicist has any right to accept or defend the theory of gravity! Only an astronomer has any right to accept or defend the Big Bang theory! Only an epidemiologist has any right to accept or defend the germ theory of disease!
Sure, if sycld dreamed up his own personal biological theories and then was proven wrong, he might not be able to understand why, if he wasn't well-educated in the appropriate field. But he's in no danger of being put in that situation. Know why? Because he DOESN'T dream up his own personal unsupported theories; instead he goes with what the actual scientific community has learned. As long as he chooses to invest his credulity in the scientifically supported ideas, he's not really in much danger of being proven wrong in the first place.
I'm not an idiot; if something I said were wrong, and I were given an explanation as to why I'm wrong, I would accept it. We're speaking about a hypothetical here that hasn't happened.
And thanks for completely ignoring what I said and not addressing a single point of what I said. You're simply impossible to talk to. I have an understanding about what we're talking about even if it is not as deep as some people's understanding of it.
Also, I think that I can be pretty certain that you don't question most of things you're taught with the same vigor as you question evolution. I wouldn't be surprised ifyou're going to say "oh, but I do," but I know that's not true.
I'm going to say this one more time. I recognize that not everything is understood about evolution. Not everything is understood about any field of science. That doesn't mean it's wrong.
Finally, you never said what was wrong about the video. Its argument is correct, and it has to start at such an elementary level because the vast, vast majority of creationism supporters don't understand science. I don't understand how you can say all these things about us, when almost all the people in the creationism camp are not experts or scientists themselves who aren't qualified to say the things they do.
You're not saying a damn thing except that we're all a bunch of ignorant idiots and that we should just believe what you're saying, some bachelors student in biology, that evolution as the VAST majority of researchers embrace, really can't explain all the empirical evidence. I'm not going to make that "leap of faith."
Guys, religion is based on faith and science is based on what we can figure out. Religion might be right and we won't no for sure until we die. Science might be right and we won't know for sure until we die. Some god may have set things up the way they are so that we could figure out what we've figured out and then have to decide whether we trust in our faith or in what we can figure out, or there may be no god and science could be 100% correct (in spite of the way that there is technically no way to disprove a god).
Arguing about it is stupid. People will believe what they want to believe, and then when we die we will either find out who was right or we won't find anything.
EDIT: Wait, I didn't read all of the thread and assumed this was the age-old science v. religion argument. Is someone actually trying to say that evolution didn't happen? That is just silly, no matter what you believe.
And here we go again with the same false dichotomy that many people on both sides are trapped in:
Evolution can only be true if there is no god, and if a god exists then creationism has to be true.
Of course, it couldn't be the case that a person can believe in Christianity and still support science. No, of course not. Even though the idea of a non-literal interpretation of Genesis stretches back to the earliest Fathers of the Church, whose teachings all Christians recognize (Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants alike, among others). Even though the leadership of the largest sect of Christianity in the world, Catholicism, has accepted evolution as both not out of line with faith in God and as probably true.
Despite all this, yes, we just have to keep the debate confined to only these two viewpoints.
There also could be the Gods of Mount Olympus waiting for us when we die. There may also be a big red guy with horns condemning us to an eternity of suffering. Don't make the absurd claim that, because we can't disprove the existence of a god, the belief of the existence thereof should be given equal credence to a complete dismissal of the idea.
Not to mention the harm that comes directly out of people who believe and worship a god who is angry, vengeful, vain, racist, sexist and intolerant.
Arguing about it is most certainly not stupid.
I am a perfect example of both playing in exquisite harmony.
Not only is this false, it is also counter-productive. Fear of science is harmful to society and inhibits its progress, and by painting a pro-science attitude as essentially atheistic, you are doing nothing more than discouraging people from studying it and encouraging paranoid fear about it. I guess you have no idea what it's like to be a person of faith (as I do), so I suppose this is something you can't understand.
You can fight against religion all you want, but by dragging evolution into this conflict, you're only making the defense of science unnecessarily harder for those of us that are trying to advance it.
EDIT:
Oh wait, you made an edit:
So what's your fucking point here? Why can't they exist in separate spheres?
You're some fucking New Age BS semi-Buddhist dealy, so you don't count.
I suppose not. But it being frightening is completely separate to it being false, and while I acknowledge the former I deny the latter. Religion is by its nature unscientific. Necessarily so.
I'm not dragging evolution into the conflict...
You don't care that they are contradictory?
Jesus Christ. That was my point. They are different, but not contradictory. It's only atheists that make it seem like evolution fundamentally contradicts a belief in god or Christianity and theists that support creationism that make them seem contradictory.
That's like saying that jackhammering and religion aren't compatible and thus must be contradictory.
Move this thread to AI
You guys misinterpreted what I was saying. Also, I agree with sycld. Science and creationism aren't necessarily contradictory, and they can certainly coexist.
Also, the religious problems in the world, when thoroughly examine, don't have much to do with religion at all.
No, none of that applies to what I've said. Evolution has nothing to do with what I'm saying. Evolution and religion can get along. RELIGION and SCIENCE are contradictory. Not because they teach different things, but because religion is, by nature, unscientific.
So is, say art, but art doesn't deal with FACTS. Religion DOES. That is why religion and science are contradictory, and other unscientific things, like art, do not come into conflict with science.
Listen to me, sycld. Read what I'm saying, not what you think I'm saying. Why on Earth would I say that evolution contradicts a belief in God? That's entirely nonsensical.
Uhh. I guess that would depend on what you mean by "contradictory" and "coexist". Creationism is certainly incompatible with scientific principles on a certain level.
This is correct. Science is the acquisition of knowledge though empirical observation of phenomena. Religion, ipso facto, involves a claim to knowledge that wasn't acquired scientifically.
Just because some knowledge isn't acquired scientifically doesn't mean it can't be compatible with science. It makes it less likely to be compatible, but doesn't inherently imply absolute incompatibility.
If it turns out that beliefs held by religious people are correct, then those beliefs are still (or would be until the scientific discovery of their truthfulness) unscientific. They were not arrived at by scientific means. However, many beliefs held by religious people are simply, unavoidably incompatible with what we know as well-supported scientific principles -- creationism, for instance, as Syme said.
The only way creationism can't be compatible with evolution is if you take the bible, Mahabharata, Qu'ran, or whatever else literally. As simple of an assumption as any of these being a metaphorical account can cure that.
A creator is incompatible with simple scientific principles. No "taking anything literally" required.
Fair enough. Theoretically speaking, one could take Adam and Eve to be the first fully-realized evolved humans, could take the biblical timetable as inaccurate or poorly defined, take the 7-day story as meaning the big bang and setting physics into motion, and just ignore the omissions (because omissions don't prove or disprove anything anyway) and their belief system could line up just fine with science.
"The first fully-realized evolved humans" seems to be a statement without meaning.
Well, not really. I mean, if evolution happens by means of tiny spontaneous genetic mutations from generation to generation, then the difference between any given Adam and any given Eve and their parents is just negligible -- we've probably evolved further away from Adam and Eve than they had from the previous generation.
The first generation of a species is impossible to pinpoint, I think. I could be wrong, but I leave that to someone more educated than me to point out.
Once again, not taken literally. 'god' speaking to 'adam and eve' could be viewed theoretically as 'god' telling the beginning of the species not to be fucking stupid, because it would look bad if he told them later.
I don't know, I am having a real hard time arguing this side of this argument seeing as I consider most of the bible to be moralistic folk tale.
My point is to question what is the "beginning of the species". I'm not being picky or taking apart one little irrelevant detail. It's a point that has intrinsic importance to your position.
So at what point could God have stepped in and reasonably chose to impart his instructions?
Whenever he wanted to, he's god. The biggest problem with making the adam and eve story theoretical isn't 'how did god do it?', it is 'who were adam and eve?'
*groans* I am tired, and this argument is too hypothetical for me at this hour, so I'm going to simplify my stance a bit. I think that there is no reason why someone couldn't be a deist and believe that all of science is right also.
Yes. At this point, we were just debating what we mean by "coexistence" and "contradictory"; I don't think what we were saying was really in disagreement.
Well, regardless of the debate you and Mr. E have been having, there's nothing in science that definitively rules out a higher intelligence behind it all. I haven't the slightest clue where you get that impression.
On the other hand, I still agree that religion and science occupy different spheres, just as science and music occupy different spheres, or jackhammering and religion...
This is basically the same question as which came first: the chicken or the egg.
The answer is, of course, the egg.
Once upon a time, there was a creature that was not quite a chicken and from that not-quite-chicken came a thing which was without a doubt an egg. That egg hatched and the creature that emerged was what we call a chicken.
The reason why we can say this is because a chicken and an egg are both things we can define. So we can point at some thing and say, yes that it a egg or no it isn't etc. Or similarly, yes that is a human being, or no it isn't. We can argue and quibble forever and a day with each other over the exact definition you want to use, but the fact is, if you have a word for it, that word has a definition, and historical entities either fit (or fitted) that definition or they don't/didn't. This is true even if you don't know if a given specimen fitted that definition or not, so we don't have to know exactly WHICH chicken egg was first, to know that there was a first chicken egg, or that the egg came before the chicken.
I had this in mind when I wrote that.
A chicken is a creature which fits a certain biological profile. A human, similarly. A human, then, is presumably something with a sufficiently similar biological profile to ours, but I'm saying that there is probably more difference between the biological profiles of whatever "first human" you want to identify and us than there would have been between those first humans and the previous generation.
I don't know how to say this succinctly and I'm not all that comfortable with the terminology, so am I making any sense?
The scientific principle that knowledge comes from observation of phenomena, and that the best explanation for something is the one that best fits the observed evidence. Belief in a creator flies in the face of this principle.
When it comes to speciation, this explanation isn't really correct. Speciation is too gradual a process for us to be able to say that the chicken OR the egg came first. The transition from "not-quite-a-chicken" to "definitely a chicken" took more than one generation. There would have been multiple generations where breeding between a modern chicken and the "proto-chicken" from those generations would have had a chance of producing fertile offspring, but wouldn't have reliably done so (and the chance would have increased over time as the population in question became more and more closely related to modern chickens). There wouldn't have been a single generation where you could say "this creature is definitely a chicken but it's parents definitely weren't quite chickens, so the egg came first".
That principle isn't absolute though (as we often observe phenomena without full knowledge of all forces in action, be it whether it is a force we don't fully understand, a force which we mislabel as another force, or a force we don't know about at all), I was looking more for a specific law or theory.
I mean, arguments can be made using thermodynamic entropy, but gwahir said 'simple scientific principles' can refute the existence of a creator, and thermodynamic entropy isn't exactly simple.