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| 5/17 |
| 2005/2/22-23 [Recreation/Humor, Reference/Religion, Science/Biology] UID:36366 Activity:very high Cat_by:auto |
2/22 Dear motd conservatives, what do you have to say about this:
http://tinyurl.com/45m4w (Scientific American on evolution).
We know who you are, please answer.
\_ Read this and then maybe you can start to reconsider some of
the assumptions implicit in your question:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/georgewill/gw20050106.shtml
\_ Einstein meant he wasn't an atheist in the crusading sense, but
he was an atheist in the essential, didn't believe in God sense:
"From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and
have always been an atheist ... I have repeatedly said that in
my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You
may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading
spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due
to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious
indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of
humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual
understanding of nature and of our being."
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious
convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do
not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but
have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be
called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the
structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
\_ Einstein is going to hell! -Christian
\_ People are dumb, they believe all sorts of weird crap. Even on
the MOTD, Berkeley, etc. I've encountered people who believe
that evolution isn't a proven theory, or that quantum mechanics
is wrong, or that classical mechanics is wrong and therefore
invalid, or that a so-called "red state" is completely republican
or a so-called "blue state" is completely democratic, or that
tsunamis shouldn't cause deaths because people should be able
to swim out of it, etc. etc. Trying to convince them otherwise
is just a futile exercise in frustration because after a certain
age people's minds just calcify. I mean, if you think about it
seriously, doesn't the concept of a guy who can tell what's going
on 24/7 on a planet with over six billion people seem a bit
ridiculous? Or the fact that a bunch of migrant Jews would know
better than anyone else that their version of god is the true
version vs. all the others? If you think about it, it's somewhat
ironic that a minor cultish sect of judaism took over the
Western world. I bet if you were living back then in Roman times
you'd bet the farm that we'd all still be praying to Jupiter in
the next couple of milleniums. Of course, if you were talking to
a Born Again Christian they'd say it proves their faith. What
it really proves is that you can fool a lot of people a lot of
the time, and we as a human species like to be fooled a lot.
\_ See, I am not religious but I have a lot of problems with
evolution. For one thing, some evolution 'defenders' (it's very
odd that a theory would need defenders in the first place) have
taken on decidedly militant tones lately. It's very misleading
to talk about evolution as a 'proven theory,' firstly because
evolution is an empirical claim and as such isn't something you
prove, and secondly because there is no single 'theory of
evolution.' The theory, like many mature theories, undergone
evolution.' The theory, like many mature theories, has undergone
several revisions because it disagreed with the data, and as
such had to be fixed. Evolution as a theory has a lot of problems
that need fixing. I wish people would stop wasting time with
the fundies, and similarly stopped treating evolution itself in a
fundy way, and started fixing problems with it. Or finding new
ways to hunt fossils. On a related topic, I am very interested
in the current state of the art on the origins of life question,
which is the big unsolved gorilla you need to tackle if you
accept the 'western secular' interpretation of life. I would
also like to add my extreme scepticism towards current
explanations for certain events in the Earth's past, like the
advent of multicellularity, and the Cambrian explosion. -- ilyas
\_ I postulate God created the Universe! and left all those
fossils to lead the heathens to Satan
\_ You seem to have confused "conservatives" with "young-earth
creationists". I'm the former, but not the latter. (And Scientific
American proved itself as a rag in its attack on "The Skeptical
Environmentalist") -emarkp
\_ I really don't understand why people (on both sides) think
evolution contradicts God/relligion. What if God desgined
the principle of evolution?
\_ because the Bible is the "word of god", and evolution
directly contradicts most of the Bible's creation story. -tom
\_ Some people (why, it's beyond me) interpret the Hebrew word
'yom' which was translated to English 'day' to mean a
literal 24-hour period in the highly symbolic account in
Genesis. -emarkp
\_ Even if you accept the idea that Genesis doesn't
represent literal days, it is still completely wrong.
And things like the Great Flood clearly never happened.
-tom
\_ There's no historical evidence of the exodus, yet I
accept that as history. Some people argue for a
limited geography flood (rather than global) which
I'm objecting to less than previously. I know that
the scientific evidence strongly contradicts the
flood--but then it also strongly contradicts the
resurrection, walking on water, etc. I don't know
where dinosaurs figure in (or early hominids) but I
don't reject the scientific evidence, nor do I
dismiss the teachings of scripture. -emarkp
\_ yes, we're well aware of your ability to believe
mutually contradictory things. My original point
was just that people who are not so good at that
find science to be threatening, since the
implication is that their "Word of God" is just
a bunch of made-up stories. -tom
\_ It shouldn't be surprising that people can feel
threatened when their beliefs are attacked
on a regular basis by fallacious logic. The
hard part is separating the reasonable
arguments (no scientific evidence for global
flood) vs. the fallacious assertions (Jesus
wasn't resurrected) vs. fallacious logic (God
can't create a rock too big to lift, so he must
not be omnipotent!). -emarkp
\_ Well, it's not that hard; you can do what
you just did, which is put two red
herrings out there to deflect from the
fact that you've already lost the
argument. -tom
\_ Hewbrew? Some fundies have problems accepting the idea
that the King James version isn't the pure translation.
\_ There are problematic issues when you accept evolution and try
to reconcile it with Adam and Eve. Like, who were the birth
parents of Adam & Eve? Did they have souls, etc.? -emarkp
\_ what if the birth parents of adam&eve had slightly
different mitochondrial dna and rna.. the mutation in
eve's mitochondrial dna and/or rna resulted in a new
species (since mitochondrial dna and rna is only passed
down maternally.) (of course, this is assuming that
it was not literally adam's rib that resulted in eve.)
\_ That's the trouble with religion. You never know which
bits of nonsense are 'highly symbolic' (i.e. 'yom') and
which are literal truth (i.e. Adam and Eve). It's fairly
obviously to me Adam and Eve were not literally first
obvious to me Adam and Eve were not literally first
humans. -- ilyas
\_ But they appear to have been real individuals who made
an important decision. But then I believe that prophets
today clairfy sticky issues like that. -emarkp
\_ Wow. That's really cool. In my religion, prophets
get like, nailed to crosses, or beheaded or end up
wandering aimlessly in deserts for 40 years. What's
your current prophet's name? I'd like to send him an
email and get some clarifications. thanks.
\_ What makes you think they were real? Just because
there's a legend about them? Don't you see how
fucking retarded that is?
\_ I accept the Bible as a record of revelations. I
don't claim it to be perfect/inerrant, etc.
Reading that record strongly indicates there were
two people named Adam and Eve in Genesis. -emarkp
\_ You don't address my question. I ask you why
accept that. There's no basis for accepting it.
\_ You asked if I believed that Adam and Eve
were real just because there's a legend
about them. Reparsing that, my answer is:
no. -emarkp
\_ Well my further question is why you
accept the bible as a record when there
are obvious problems with that. Just
taking the Mormon stuff separately, you
are basing a huge set of beliefs on the
mere assertion of one man. I find that
to be ridiculous. And absurd that God
would operate in such a feeble fashion.
(Although I believe the same basically
goes for Christ, at least the claim there
is that various miracles were witnessed
by multitudes.)
\_ Along this thread, i've wondered why
the Stargate series hasn't touched on
christianity. seems a logical plot
path.
\_ One man? How's that? There were 11
witnesses of the golden plates that
the BoM was translated from. -emarkp
\_ Oh 11? I wasn't aware of that. See,
God's not too good at getting His
message across. Since 11 people
saw it I'll believe it now.
\_ Glad I could help.
\_ What would you do if somehow
something came up that proved
Mormonism was untrue? Would
be willing to accept that or
just have faith that it's
true anyway? I guess I'm
thinking like a verifiable
diary of the dude admitting
he cooked it all up in order
to reap the benefits of
ruling a cult.
\_"Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as false, and by
rulers as useful." -- Seneca
by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." -- Seneca
\_ Great quote, thanks. I also found this quote by the
same: "I don't trust liberals, I trust conservatives".
Heh.
\_ http://www.skinnypanda.com/pastepisodes/2005/05-02-21.gif
\_ This is hilarious!!! Best jotd, thanks for sharing this.
\_ how many death threats did the author get from this?
\_ Crap I laughed my ass off -- One of the more brilliant things
I've seen on the internet so far -- much better than "tubgirl"
\_ 1. Conservative != Religious. I'm sure there are plenty of
atheist conservatives. 2. You cannot reason with religious people
about their religion, especially if it's Christianity/Islam/
Mormonism, etc., religions that say "This is the way the Universe
works exactly even if your own eyes say otherwise", as opposed to
other religions that don't try to tell you exactly how the Universe
works but just try to give people a moral framework and some
philosophical insight. Like Governor Jesse Ventura said, religion
is mostly for people who cannot deal with the philosophical
implications of what happens when you die, when did the Universe
begin/was it always here/how will it end, etc. If you cannot
figure it out yourself, life becomes hard because it makes reality
harder to cope with. So you turn to religion to give you answers.
Or, you've been brought up with it or your country/community
encourages/forces it.
But trying to "reason" with religious people is hopeless since they
have already accepted conflicting information in order to gain the
above answers to the difficult questions of life, even if it does
seem silly to some to base your understanding of reality on texts
writting 2000+ years ago. Would you trust a surgeon from 2000 years
ago to operate on you? |
| 5/17 |
|
| tinyurl.com/45m4w -> sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=13&articleID=0003EFE0-D68A-1212-8F3983414B7F0000 Nineteenth-century English social scientist Herbert Spencer made this pre scient observation: "Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution , as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all." When I debate creationists, they present not one fac t in favor of creation and instead demand "just one transitional fossil" that proves evolution. When I do offer evidence (for example, Ambulocet us natans, a transitional fossil between ancient land mammals and modern whales), they respond that there are now two gaps in the fossil record. This is a clever debate retort, but it reveals a profound error that I ca ll the Fossil Fallacy: the belief that a "single fossil"--one bit of dat a--constitutes proof of a multifarious process or historical sequence. I n fact, proof is derived through a convergence of evidence from numerous lines of inquiry--multiple, independent inductions, all of which point to an unmistakable conclusion. We know evolution happened not because of transitional fossils such as A natans but because of the convergence of evidence from such diverse fie lds as geology, paleontology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and phys iology, molecular biology, genetics, and many more. No single discovery from any of these fields denotes proof of evolution, but together they r eveal that life evolved in a certain sequence by a particular process. One of the finest compilations of evolutionary data and theory since Char les Darwin's On the Origin of Species is Richard Dawkins's magnum opus, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (Houghton Mif flin, 2004)--688 pages of convergent science recounted with literary ele gance. Dawkins traces numerous transitional fossils (what he calls "conc estors," the last common ancestor shared by a set of species) from Homo sapiens back four billion years to the origin of heredity and the emerge nce of evolution. No single concestor proves that evolution happened, bu t together they reveal a majestic story of process over time. We know evolution happened because of a convergence of evidence. With so many breeds of dogs popular for so many thousands of years, one would think there would be an abundance of transitional fossils providing paleontologists with copious data from wh ich to reconstruct their evolutionary ancestry. In fact, according to Je nnifer A Leonard, an evolutionary biologist then at the Smithsonian Ins titution's National Museum of Natural History, "the fossil record from w olves to dogs is pretty sparse." In the November 22, 2002, Science, Leonard and her colleagues report t hat mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data from early dog remains "strongly supp ort the hypothesis that ancient American and Eurasian domestic dogs shar e a common origin from Old World gray wolves." In the same issue, molecular biologist Peter Savolainen of the Royal Inst itute of Technology in Stockholm and his colleagues note that even thoug h the fossil record is problematic, their study of mtDNA sequence variat ion among 654 domestic dogs from around the world "points to an origin o f the domestic dog in East Asia" about 15,000 years before the present f rom a single gene pool of wolves. Finally, anthropologist Brian Hare of Harvard University and his colleagu es describe in this same issue the results of a study showing that domes tic dogs are more skillful than wolves at using human signals to indicat e the location of hidden food. Yet "dogs and wolves do not perform diffe rently in a nonsocial memory task, ruling out the possibility that dogs outperform wolves in all human-guided tasks," they write. Therefore, "do gs' social-communicative skills with humans were acquired during the pro cess of domestication." No single fossil proves that dogs came from wolves, but archaeological, m orphological, genetic and behavioral "fossils" converge to reveal the co ncestor of all dogs to be the East Asian wolf. The tale of human evoluti on is divulged in a similar manner (although here we do have an abundanc e of fossils), as it is for all concestors in the history of life. We kn ow evolution happened because innumerable bits of data from myriad field s of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgrimage. |
| www.townhall.com/columnists/georgewill/gw20050106.shtml WASHINGTON -- One hundred years ago a minor Swiss civil servant, having t raveled home in a streetcar from his job in the Bern patent office, wond ered: What would the city's clock tower look like if observed from a str eetcar racing away from the tower at the speed of light? The clock, he d ecided, would appear stopped because light could not catch up to the str eetcar, but his own watch would tick normally. A storm broke loose in my mind,'' Albert Einstein later remembered . He produced five papers in 1905 and for physicists, the world has neve r been the same. Einstein's Cosmos,'' Michio Kaku, professor of the oretical physics at the City University of New York, makes Einstein's ge nius seem akin to a poet's sensibility. They still ca n be for our everyday business, because we and the objects we deal with do not move at the speed of light. But since Einstein's postulate of rel ativity, measurements of space and time are thought to be relative to sp eed. One implication of Einstein's theories did have thunderous practical implications: matter and energy are interchangeable, and the mass of an object increases the faster it moves. In the most famous equation in th e history of science, energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of ligh t squared. A wee bit of matter can be converted into a city-leveling amo unt of energy. In the 1920s, while people were enjoying being told that space is wa rped and it pushes things down (that is the real force'' of gravity), Einstein became an international celebrity of a sort not seen before or since. Selfridges department store in London pasted the six pages of an Einstein paper on a plate glass window for passersby to read. Astronomy evicted us from our presumed place at the center of the universe many centuries before we learned th at center'' is unintelligible in an expanding universe where space and time are warped. And before 19th-century biology further diminished our sense of grandeur by connecting us with undignified ancestors, 18th-cen tury geology indicated that seashells unearthed on mountain tops proved that Earth has a longer, more turbulent and unfinished history than most creation stories suggest. Einstein's theism, such as it was, was his faith that God does not p lay dice with the universe -- that there are elegant, eventually discove rable laws, not randomness, at work. Saying I'm not an atheist,'' he e xplained: We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library f illed with books in many different languages. It does not understan d the languages in which they are written. Meaning: Life equals the Big Bang, followed by lot s of paper work, ending with either a Big Crunch, as the universe collap ses back on itself, or a Big Freeze as it expands forever. Everything, as has been said since E instein, is relative. With a Happy Eye, But: America and the World, 1997-2002 In the latest collection of his writings, Will describes contemporary Ame ricans as "naive optimists." He opines on the inevitability of war, the necessity of the death penalty, the need for the military to remedy mora l values, the fundamental flaws of a liberal intelligensia "too short on certitude," and his impatience with a society "too squeamish to call ev il by its right name." Then write a letter to your Members of Congress or your local newspapers, who you can find by entering your ZIP code in the boxes below. Also mak e sure to tell your newspaper editors that they should carry your favori te conservative columnists! NOTE: Columns will not be automatically attached to the emails you send t hrough this tool. |