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During the tsunami of bicentennial celebrations of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday in February, I visited the fringes of evolutionary skepticism to better understand how one of science’s grandest theories could still be doubted.
Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm in Bristol, England, is run by a kindly gentleman named Anthony Bush, who insisted that I not confuse him with those “loony American creationists” who think that Earth is only 6,000 years old. “How old do you think it is?” I queried. “Oh, I’ve worked it out to be around 100,000 years old, with Adam and Eve at around 21,000 years old.” (At an order of magnitude difference that makes Mr. Bush only five zeros shy of reality.)
What about, I pressed on, all the geologic evidence for a much older Earth? All those strata of, say, sandstone—loose sand compressed into solid rock over immense periods? Those strata are laid down every season, like tree rings, Bush explained. Interesting analogy, given that we can see trees growing from year to year, but where can we find sand being annually compressed into stone?
At the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., I learned that Earth was created in 4004 B.C., about the same time that the Mesopotamians invented beer (“That’s on the secular timeline,” I was told). Dioramas feature children frolicking among vegetarian dinosaurs, including a Tyrannosaurus rex and Utahraptor, whose daggerlike teeth and claws, it was noted, were used for cracking open coconuts before the Fall. But then the snake tempted Eve, who in turn charmed Adam into tasting the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil—after which dinosaurs became meat eaters, humans became sinners and Noah gathered the animals into the Ark (also rendered in a dioramic drama complete with screaming left-behinders on soon-to-be swamped rocks).
My tour ended with an interview with Georgia Purdom, an accommodating and bright woman (Ph.D. in molecular genetics from Ohio State University) who explained that the worldview you hold (biblical versus secular) determines how you interpret the data.
I countered by pointing out that Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project, is a born-again evangelical Christian who fully accepts evolution. In his book The Language of God (Free Press, 2007), Collins describes ancient repetitive elements (AREs) in DNA that arise from “jumping genes” that copy and insert themselves in other locations in the genome, usually without any function. When you align sections of human and mouse genomes, the AREs are in the same location. “Unless one is willing to take the position that God has placed these decapitated AREs in these precise positions to confuse and mislead us,” he asserts, “the conclusion of a common ancestor for humans and mice is virtually inescapable.”
Collins is wrong, Purdom stated, because “he does not accept the biblical history in Genesis, so he’s beginning with his ideas about what happened in the past rather than what God said happened in the past, so he’s interpreting that data in light of that starting point.”
Shoehorning science into scripture was also painfully on display at the University of North Florida, where I debated founder and chief biblical cosmologist of Reasons to Believe Hugh Ross, an Old Earth Creationist who thinks that the biblical authors describe the expanding universe in such passages as Job 9:8, where God “stretched out the heavens,” and Isaiah 40:22, where God “stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.” The key word in Hebrew is natah, which means “spread out,” like a blanket or a tent, and is a metaphor for the dome or canopy of the sky and fixed stars that formed
the basis of the cosmology of the ancient Hebrews, derived from the earlier Babylonian cosmology during the Jewish captivity in Mesopotamia.
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118 Comments
Add CommentThis proves what I have always said, that there is nothing like religon to make highly intelligent people into babbling idiots. How on earth can anyone in the twenty first centry still hold such superstitous nonsence when all evidence points the other war, that is evolution? They will torture real evidence and truth twisting it all out of shape until it fits their myths.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVegetarian dinosaurs! lol
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's so funny how far people will go in order to refute reality.
Good times!
Perhaps Evolution should be best viewed as divine revelation from an indefinable God. That would be a far more modern scientific and religious interpretation than the old mythologies taken from unverifiable sacred scriptures?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps Evolution should be best viewed as divine revelation from an indefinable God. That would be a far more modern scientific and religious interpretation than the old mythologies taken from unverifiable sacred scriptures?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's actually quite depressing, and does not bode well for our future survival as a species. Consequently, I'm just going to concentrate on science and try to push from my mind those people who are immune to reason. For instance, how on earth does a rooster's crowing make the sun rise?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Perhaps Evolution should be best viewed as divine revelation from an indefinable God. That would be a far more modern scientific and religious interpretation than the old mythologies taken from unverifiable sacred scriptures?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps an old Jewish guy in outer space that pervades everything doesn't exist, and we should develop new ways of satisfying our desire to believe in something mysterious and get us out of bed and volunteering at soup kitchens on the weekends.
Perhaps we should all become Pastafarians - and worship the Flying spaghetti monster . http://www.venganza.org/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMakes about as much sense as any established religion...
This old story again? Don't bring a metaphysical stick to a science fight. It seems that an ever increasing band of people lack the perspective to know where his or her suppositions have authority. Even with judicious integration, realize that there are corners of metaphysics that science cannot touch just as there are corners of science that metaphysics cannot touch.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is a recurring problem in that people do not know how to make a legitimate case for what they want or believe. If you want the Biblical account of creation to be taught, don't shoehorn it into Sophomore biology, push for a proper arena like philosophy or humanities.
Is the universe expanding or oscillating?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs global warming human made or sunspot related?
Does disagreement in the scientific community on the above topics negate science as a viable pursuit of truth?
It is a shame that creationists won't grasp that the sciences are coming along and there are sooo many religious theories . Our trying to interpret what the scriptures mean is / has been going through the same torturous route that the scientific community has been going through for centuries. "Ie. abandoned cheese turns into rats". If theories of Einsteins relativity, used to point out that , as the earth was being formed, time and space were altered, it is entirely possible that evolution / creation were accomplished in a "relatively" short time. ALL the FACTS are not in yet, neither
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisspiritually nor scientifically. But, I guess that the conflict will continue no matter what (since someone must be "right" now, especially by proving some one wrong).
Jim
Please check all established communities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll cannot be painted with the same brush.
Jim
It's so refreshing to read such unbiased articles in Scientific American either online or in the print. Kudos for the respectful representation you've provided regarding the individuals who took the time to debate and discuss with you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is embarrassing.
Somewhere, from one end of the universe to the other and at some time, either 12 billion years ago or earlier, SOMETHING had to have a beginning. Either a single cell or a speck of sand had to have a beginning. My question is simple, where did that cell or grain of sand come from. Somebody give me an answer to that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs someone who graduated from Ohio State with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, I just wanted to say that we do not all "believe" as the "bright" Georgia Purdom. My guess is that she needed a job and the creationists were willing to pay her a good wage. These are tough economic times and one will say anything for a salary. This is an embarrassment to Ohio State as an institution of higher learning. No wonder people see it as merely a football school.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm a Pastafarian- former Presbyterian. I've seen the light, so to speak. Former generations worshipped multiple gods and current society thinks that was crazy. A couple more hundred generations when monotheism is gone, society will say we were crazy. Break the cycle of misinformation sooner!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisrougarou, there are some really smart people trying the figure that out, and there are some pretty good theories so far that do not require a god to get things started.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut if you use the "what started the first thing" argument, and try to answer it with a god, then you just ruined your own argument, because the next question is, well what started god? Is there a god that started the god that started the universe? If so, then what created that one? Another one?
I did not mention God in my comment, I just said to answer my question. Smart people applying theories is no different from you and I coming up with another (unproven) idea, like we're doing now. There are only two options i.e. either everything has been in place forever (which is a very long time) or some entity (already present) created it. It just didn't happen. It is impossible to create something from nothing in a physical sense. Either it has always been here or some being or force created it, period. Again I ask, where did all this come from?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the century and a half since it was first propounded, evolutionary theory and its applications in the biological sciences goes on getting more robust. But had someone told me even a decade or so ago that I'd be spending a modest percentage of my time engaging in debate on the Internet with those who dispute the theory on religious grounds right here in the 21st century, I would have done a jaw-drop of incredulity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo what do I have to report after a sustained period of debate with creationists here on SciAm and on other sites? From my experience, creationism is not so much a religious belief as it is a kind of aberration of the intellect. It is an attitude that demands serious commitment to a willful rejection of a body of knowledge which already exists and which has been gained by hard work through many career lifetimes. To borrow the phrase of author Robert Harbison's, it signals a 'deliberate regression'.
Something else: I have also noticed that creationists share a stubborn resistance to take new information on board. They still go on dragging up that 'evolution is just a theory' line, even when it has been serially explained to them what a scientific theory actually is. They still defiantly go on thinking that it contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, even when it is pointed out to them that to assume this is a misinterpretation of that law. And so on.
My conclusion: to accept evolutionary theory would seem to give the human mind itself a chance to evolve and to develop, and to remain open for new ideas and opportunities. But how can one evolve if one rejects the very concept? It is as if accepting that things evolve and change creates the mental space which allows that to happen in us. Evolution, and the process of change, of evolving, is part both of life and of the natural order of things.
Change is natural. Stasis is not.
rougarou: "I did not mention God in my comment, I just said to answer my question."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe creationist version 2.0 steers clear of direct religious terms. It's the new trend, because they know that to use such terms as 'God' would immediately place them outside the scientific arena. But they're outside it anyway.
rougarou: "Either it has always been here or some being or force created it, period. Again I ask, where did all this come from?"
Your 'either/or' is of course a false dichotomy. The preclusion of one condition does not automatically mean the validation of the other. Otherwise I could just say something like: 'I don't know that there's not an invisible unicorn in my neighbor's garage, so that must prove that there is one'. And you have to both define your terms (what 'being'? what 'force'?), and having defined them, further establish the veracity of their existence. Otherwise your statement is meaningless. Which it is.
My statement is no more rediculus than the one that implies that nothing can evolve into something. I can relate to a fish evolving into a lizard or a dinosaur into a turkey but have great difficulty figuring how nothing, zero, zilch, nada, can evolve into anything. Produce one plausible theory that expains to any degree how that takes place and I will rest my case. Once again I ask, where did the matter come from that has produced all this evolutionary change?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcellent! I often use the rooster and sun analogy myself for getting cause and effect backwards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConcerning hope for the human race, I'm not sure either of the following quotes will make you feel better or worse, but I frequently meditate on them myself when feeling depressed. They help for some reason:
"The argument that evolution favors veridical perceptions is wrong, both theoretically and empirically. It is wrong in theory, because natural selection hinges on reproductive fitness, not on truth, and the two are not the same: Reproductive fitness in a particular niche might, for instance, be enhanced by reducing expenditures of time and energy in perception; true perceptions, in consequence, might be less fit than niche-specific shortcuts. It is wrong empirically: mimicry, camouflage, mating errors and supernormal stimuli are ubiquitous in nature, and all are predicated on non-veridical perceptions. The cockroach, we suspect, sees little of the truth, but is quite fit, though easily fooled, with its niche-specific perceptual hacks. Moreover, computational simulations based on evolutionary game theory, in which virtual animals that perceive the truth compete with others that sacrifice truth for speed and energy-efficiency, find that true perception generally goes extinct." Donald Hoffman www.edge.org World Question Center, 2008
Or, in other words:
"What was said about man's body may with equal justice be said about man's soul. It partakes either of all living things, all that has come before and all that will ever come after, all that exists on this particle, Earth, and all that exists in the most speculative pastures of unknowable space beyond the last red shift: either that, or it partakes of man's estate and span alone, which read on any mathematical scale must come very near absolute zero, and we are minor beings bowing before gods as appropriately insignificant as our own imagination; we are a transitional species, nature's first brief local experiment with self-awareness, a head above the ancestral ape and a head below whatever must come next; we are evolutionary failures, trapped between earth and a glimpse of heaven, prevented by our sure capacity for self-delusion from achieving any triumph more noteworthy than our own sure self-destruction." Robert Ardrey 'African Genesis' pp.155-56
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Everything does not have to have a beginning. The person who said that needs a new paradigm. It is perfectly possible for some things to just exist. The universe can just exist, we may come and go, the universe will be here. All these comments about where did everything come from, leave out the question of where a deity would come from. If a deity could just exist, so could a uinverse of energy. Heck, a universe of actual, real energy is far more realistic than a single magical being. No matter how badly you want him/her to exist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe comment made about this being embarrasing because is wasn't "respectful" representation is just wrong. I could state that faries were coming to sprinkle pixie dust on all blackberries and they would attack on New Year's Eve! It would not be out of line for an interviewer to paint me as a loon. You do not need to be respectful and unbiased if the people who you are interviewing are professing ideas that are simply incorrect and are not supported by any valid data and, in fact, have an tour de force of scientific data stating that they are wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome old books written by barely literate, nomadic tribes who knew nothing about the world around them and were spooked by everything they didn't understand doesn't count as scientific evidence. Theories need to be tested, ideas which prove false are rejected and ideas that are supported get more testing to validate. Religion simply throws out statements as if they are facts because they are in a book and states "prove me wrong". Of course, never submitting to the burden of having to prove themselves correct like the rest of the scientific community. Then, you have the people stating "just tell me how everything started". This may be a valid question and science is working on it. However, you will probably die without knowing (it's a huge and challenging question). You need to accept it and deal with it. Some questions go unanswered. If you need to make up a deity to answer all your questions to feel better, so be it. I prefer to allow the natural scientific method to slowly plod away and answer the questions as they always have. Just look through history and see how many myths have fallen to science.
Virus's and Bacteria cause disease, not demon possession (how about that?!). Those bright spots in the sky are not a crystal sphere (all at the same distance) put there for our enjoyment (an old theory), they are actually other suns all at different distances, 4 light years to billions of light years away. The Earth is not the center of our solar system, the sun is and it is not pulled across the sky by a charriot!
Obviously there are more, but you get the point. Religion states it is from a deity. Science plods on and finds the real reason and society benfits. Sometimes it just takes a long time. It's been about 400 years since the scientific method has been around (1600's?), we've learned a lot. For those who demand answers... reject dogma and help find real answers by the scientific method. Follow the data, not dogma!
Funny stuff.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt least the guy was nice to them.
I enjoyed it much better than some scathing and condescending rant about creationists.
rougarou: "Once again I ask, where did the matter come from that has produced all this evolutionary change?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI note that tharriss and blechten have already responded to you, as have I. I also note that it is the third time that you have asked this. You clearly fall into the category of creationists who think that they can back into a corner those whom they perceive as the opposition by zeroing in on areas for which science yet has no answer.
If this is so, then I assure you that your tactic will not work, for a number of reasons. One reason being the obvious one that science might not (yet) have an answer, but neither do you. You can protest an answer from the standpoint of your faith and invoke the god of the gaps, but in science this is meaningless. So you can no more substantiate your belief and turn it into hard scientific currency than you can seriously compete with the several feasible working hypotheses of science.
If I am wrong about what you consider was the source of matter, then you may correct me. If you have your own hypothesis, then state it. But be aware that these current scientific hypotheses do not all postulate that matter did in fact come from nothing. There might (for example) be/have been a negative singularity (or even a recurring series) on the other side of our own observed space/time continuum, or that matter can infinitely exist in ways that lie outside our present understanding of physics. None of which hypotheses involve any interventionist supernatural agency. As I commented recently elsewhere on SciAm, we once cowered in our cave and believed that thunder was the voice of an angry god. Do you wish to remain in that cave?
So either you can meaninglessly serially repeat your question, and sit back and invoke the god of the gaps, or you can get serious and try to figure it out, which is what science is doing. Which course of action do you think will lead to the greater advancement of human knowledge?
Rougaro, the difference between scientists and creationists is that scientists do not feel threatened by gaps in knowledge. We understand that not knowing the answer to a particular question is not an affront to our profession; it is simply one more mystery of the world we live in that is waiting for the right inspiration or technology to come along. We regard these mysteries as challenges to be welcomed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is probably the source of much of my conflict with religious types. I hope someday you learn to feel comfortable with a world where it is not necessary to have an explanation for every little thing in order to preserve your sense of self-worth.
Rougarou
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI actually think your question is the first question asked tens of thousands of years ago that started this ball rolling.
However, just because we don't "know" the answer doesn't mean there's not one. We have a hard enough time understanding that which we know to exist.....but to jump to the conclusion that there is a god and that your peticular belief is the correct one is pretty wild assumption...much wilder than any theory,in scientific terms,is.
I realize that you may be an athiest. I mean your in the plural sense.
Edward Abbey said it best..."A belief in god is a failure in imagination"
Apparently the author cannot tell the difference between Old Earth compromisers and Biblical creationists. The lack of knowledge extends to history with the silly idea that science is the domain of atheists and creationists just don't get when without them we are bloodletting and washing hands after surgery. And for an encore seems to have no grasp whatsoever of modern geologies acceptance of neo-catastrophism. Those sand layers such as in the Tapeats and Cocinino sandstones Mr. Bush was chided about were long ago reinterpreted to be underwater sand waves by secular geologist who are starting to grasp what the creationists have said all along. But why let the facts and science get in the way of your anti-Christian rant?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRougaro-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"How can something come from nothing?"
I would ask how God can come from nothing. That being said, The universe is creating virtual particles all the time. Look up "Dirac Sea". Some of these virtual particles can become real particles, thus creating matter out of non-matter.
Perhaps we should believe what each of us wishes to believe and stop trying to convince others that they are wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose are even more fun when discussing Hawking radiation from black holes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlthough I applaud those who stick to their faith, I keep thinking about Galileo and the people of their time, their beliefs and how it relates to the issue at hand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGalileo, through careful scientific study determined that the sun was the centre of the universe and not the Earth. Okay he was wrong too but in his time, death for heresy was common and the belief that we arent the centre of the universe was indeed heresy. Today, we dont really care that we arent the centre of the universe. Why is that? For me the thought that an omnipotent being who created the universe is akin to a chess player who can calculate how the whole chess game would play out after the first move. The first move was the Big Bang.
Truth will always stand the test of time. To be termed scientific fact, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of logical reasoning. Faith doesnt follow such rigid principles. It has only one principle and that is to believe what one is told. When faced with evidence that doesnt fall within the boundaries of faith, one manufactures methods by which these new ideas can exist in ones dogma; hence the razor sharp toothed Tyrannosaurus Rex eating coconuts!
Making new scientific facts fit ones dogma is rather unsophisticated. I find it easier to believe that over time, stories that were passed down were mistranslated and misunderstood. Ideas could not be expressed with the limited understanding of the day and yet we are trying to use our present understanding to justify the words of yesterday in the name of faith. I cant understand a civilization that can create amazing thought provoking science fiction films still has a hard time understanding the scientific method.
FPC52: " ...were long ago reinterpreted to be underwater sand waves by secular geologist who are starting to grasp what the creationists have said all along. But why let the facts and science get in the way of your anti-Christian rant?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps FPC52 would care to elaborate on who exactly 'secular geologists' might be. One either is a qualified geologist or one is not. Does FPC52 also think in terms of 'secular surgeons' or 'secular particle physicists'? And I certainly have not noticed anyone here, up to and including the author of this article, indulge in any 'anti-Christian rant'. Anti-creationist perhaps, in the sense of opposing the anti-science views propounded by creationists, but that is hardly the same as including the entire Christian community.
Anti-science. Now there's an 'anti' to take note of.
Rougarou,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is the ability of inorganic compounds under the right circumstances, to form organic compounds. As these are the building blocks of all life on this planet, it would only be a matter of time before they slowly evolved. Try to keep in mind, the vast amounts of time life evolved over. We see evolutionary changes on the order of years in certain areas on this planet. This life had billions of years to evolve. This is a timeframe most people cannot grasp.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the creationism debate reflects confusion between 'True' and 'useful'.
The behavioral models that science produces are useful as tools for prediction and control. But they have no necessary link to Truth. The universe could have been created 5 minutes ago, for all we know. Indeed, it may not exist at all, and our brains are, in reality, connected to super computers that are feeding synthesized perceptions.
That 'brain in a vat' theory is not provably false, it just isn't useful. Similarly, the 't-rex eating coconuts' is not useful either, since it doesn't fit in a larger, self-consistent behavioral model. Said another way, why bother with coconuts? Why not just say that God created t-rex fossils on a whim?
That is the real problem with creationism. The purpose of science is not just to explain--clearly, it is trivial to synthesize self-consistent, creationist explanations for any observation. The challenge is to find explanations that are useful, especially for providing prediction and control.
Good grief!!! ... I'll play the devils advocate hare by saying, "who are you people, to say that science and creationism is correct? Yes we have 'support' but has anyone considered that a persons wants to achieve fame and be remembered by their works." My point is that people made mistakes in the past and have been very good in covering them up, so how can science be a firm explanation for scientific theories?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this*D-advocate*: "My point is that people made mistakes in the past and have been very good in covering them up, so how can science be a firm explanation for scientific theories?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour statement is too sweeping to have credence, *D-advocate*. Fudging data and engaging in cover-ups is a serious accusation in science. If you make such assertions then you should be prepared to back them up with specific names, instances and sources. Can you?
You Americans are so ironic. Can make spectacular scientific breaktrhougs but can't distinguish between science and believes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Somewhere, from one end of the universe to the other and at some time, either 12 billion years ago or earlier, SOMETHING had to have a beginning. Either a single cell or a speck of sand had to have a beginning. My question is simple, where did that cell or grain of sand come from. Somebody give me an answer to that."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy? To state that SOMETHING "had to have" a beginning is merely to set up a straw horse. You exist in a universe without beginning or end. Your inability to accept this doesn't make it not so.
Michael,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will pray for the day of your judgement and may God's grace bring mercy on you. May the Lord abstain from religating you to pressure monitoring of a black hole or worse yet temperature inspection of sulfer pits for the mocking of his creation.
From Genesis 'let there be light" to Einstein's E=mc? I am certain you appreciate and understand how beautiful a wavelength of light can be, awestruck by the speed of which it travels, amazed at its role in originating our universe, and perplexed by what it all could mean.
Yes, the flesh can confuse a message but darkness does not serve you well.
So get your energy and mass in balance before answers to your questions come to late..... you C.....oh so squared!
"Why? To state that SOMETHING "had to have" a beginning is merely to set up a straw horse. You exist in a universe without beginning or end. Your inability to accept this doesn't make it not so." - Nivram13032
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn likemanner, your inability to accept that God created the universe does not mean that he didn't.
"My statement is no more rediculus than the one that implies that nothing can evolve into something. I can relate to a fish evolving into a lizard or a dinosaur into a turkey but have great difficulty figuring how nothing, zero, zilch, nada, can evolve into anything. Produce one plausible theory that expains to any degree how that takes place and I will rest my case. Once again I ask, where did the matter come from that has produced all this evolutionary change?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thise nihil nihilo - nothing comes of nothing - Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, ca 60 BCE. He has some beautiful proofs of this that have stood the test of time. Read him. (This is in fact the very first principle he deals with.) Lots of other brilliant reflections on what matter is and the universe, and how they interact. Oh, and he just lurvs religion/superstition. You won't find him a pain, cos he's writing pre Christianity ;-)
"Humanity only sets itself questions it is capable of answering." Karl Marx. This is an aphorism all of us should ponder. Note the "humanity" - not individual human beings. The questions put and answered by Aristotle, Euclid and Archimedes were taken up (on the whole and all things considered) by the mass of thinkers, mathematicians and engineers cos they corresponded to the needs of developing human society at the time. Hero's steam machine didn't, cos it didn't correspond to the needs or capabilities of the time.
If the atheists (shock! horror!) Lucretius and Marx feel too threatening for you, try the rock-solid reactionary Hegel (the world is God, the Prussian bureaucratic bourgeois monarchy is the End of History, Thought/the Spirit precedes Being - the full monty). No flies on him. It took Marx to assimilate and move beyond him. Others just accepted Kant's blind alley, walled off by the Thing in Itself (God by another name) and when things were safe to do so (after the revolutions of 1848) treated Hegel like "a dead dog", and ignored him. Apart from furtively nicking what was expedient - same treatment as Marx.
Quantum89: "In likemanner, your inability to accept that God created the universe does not mean that he didn't."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMisses the point. This article is about the claims made by certain religious beliefs to be 'science'. Accepting that God did or did not create the universe is religious belief unless 'God' can be laboratory-verified. So it's okay to bring God into the equation, as long as you accept that what you say remains in the realm of religious belief, and is not science.
Science is more honest. The scientific community is willing and often does admit that they don't know the answer. The crationist insist that because that the answer is unknown....then the answer must be god.... and their particular god to boot.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes science have it's faults?...of coarse it does. Has Scientific study ever produced evidence a certian way for monitary gain?...It has....but make no mistake about it...science has given us an understanding of the world and the universe around it... infinatly more than all the religions rolled into one.
If they could, they would even torture the people who hold 'dangerous scientific views'. (I can only say, "Thank the Good Lord - if He/She/It exists - that we have progressed somewhat now".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuantum89 at 02:41 AM on 04/30/09
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"...In like manner, your inability to accept that God created the universe does not mean that he didn't".
In like manner, your inability to accept that there may be not God whatsoever does not mean that God does exist.
Your belief - or my lack of belief - has no bearing whatsoever on the real issue: the existence or otherwise of God.
--- GSC
rougarou at 11:20 AM on 04/28/09
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomewhere, from one end of the universe to the other and at some time, either 12 billion years ago or earlier, SOMETHING had to have a beginning. Either a single cell or a speck of sand had to have a beginning. My question is simple, where did that cell or grain of sand come from. Somebody give me an answer to that.
I am not all-knowing - so I can't give you that answer. The creationists ARE all-knowing, apparently (according to themselves), and they give us an answer that I find truly laughable.
-- GSC
I had posted:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Your belief - or my lack of belief - has no bearing whatsoever on the real issue: the existence or otherwise of God."
Perhaps I should add - science at least 'tries' (if not with total success) to give us some answers that we could use to move forward.
Creationism gives us (with total success) answers that we can all use to move definitively backward. (E.g., torturing those who disagree with us).
-- GSC
look wat eve dude we believe wat we believe religion is a huge chalenge but its based on faith and all this evolution mumbo jumbo is a rock in our road and who cares about science when like every couple decades theories are changed like this dinosaur that had a long neck was supposedbly eating from high trees and it turns out that it ate from bushes science is just a way for people to get out of the responsbilities of religion such as church and not sining so its like wat ever besides the more technology we use and make the unhealthier the earth gets cant you just live the simple life and forget weather or not your great grandpa was a monkey i mean really are we all gonna die if we dont know if cave mean used berries or rocks to make thier heiroglyphics just get over it!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"In likemanner, your inability to accept that God created the universe does not mean that he didn't. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStating that a magic being created anything and then waiting for someing to prove the negative is a copout and really just plain silly.
I could state a magic teapot is orbiting just outside the Kuiper Belt and occasionally pours magic tea. If you wish at the time of the pouring, your wish will come true. I have seen the holy text where it was written by a prophet born out of the left nipple of a virgin and carried off to heaven by a spirit gopher. Unfortunately the text was destroyed by an angry monk after a batch of beer was ruined so it is no longer available for authentication. It is up to you to prove me wrong. Too bad proving a negative is a real bugger. Good luck. It's just about pouring time, I have a wish to make.
It is incumbant on the person making the claim to prove it. It really seems the people who keep making the spiritual and god claims miss this central point of science. Science is trying to prove "where all that matter came from" and "how it all started". That's what all those "experiments" are all about. Perhaps you haven't been paying attention. Those questions can't be answered right now and may not be answered for hundereds of years (or possibly thousands of years) with any real certainty. Yes, it is possible we're just not that smart yet.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention one thing. The magic teapot is not detectable by anything in this or any other universe. After all, it is magic. All those who gaze upon it are turned into crumpets, so it was written.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLrn 2 grammar. I'm not going to say that will help your credibility, because that post was utter nonsense, but it will probably annoy fewer people. Maybe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisILoveJesus: "who cares about science when like every couple decades theories are changed like this dinosaur that had a long neck was supposedbly eating from high trees and it turns out that it ate from bushes"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou see, ILoveJesus, it's like this: science has this little something going called 'the advancement of human knowledge'. Maybe you've heard of it, maybe not. It gives science the flexibility to adapt to new information gained during the course of fieldwork, experimentation and research.
Basically, this accumulation of new knowledge is the reason why we now no longer believe that thunder is the voice of an angry god, or that the stars are little holes in the great big bedsheet that covers the world at night-time (did you know that every time an angel sneezes, a star is born?), or that a fossil seashell on a mountaintop was carried there by a really, really major-league flood that an angry god (yes, another one) sent to destroy lots and lots of bad, wicked people that this god had made. Stuff like that. Just stories. All in retreat before the advancement of human knowledge.
ILoveJesus: "science is just a way for people to get out of the responsbilities of religion such as church and not sining so its like wat ever"
I guess that's why all those who do not go to church live an all-brakes-off lifestyle of unbridled, immoral hedonism and debauchery. No, but really, ILoveJesus, get real. And learn what full stops are for. Please.
What an impressive title, and abstract! �Following up on
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthat impressive start, I expected some amazing revelation of how Behe
disproved Humphreys, but all I get is a folksey "people say stuff". �A
collection of points of view that the writer disagreed with doth not an
argument make. �It is entirely unsurprising that these views are all at odds
with evolution -- he specifically selected anti-evolution views -- what did
he expect? �Did someone really pay his travel costs to write this piece?
I was really hoping for something more meaty: something like the argument
between evolutionists about how powered flight might have evolved -- from the
ground up, or from the trees down. �The proponents of the ground-up view have
excellent arguments against the trees-down proponents. �The trees-down
proponents have excellent arguments against the ground-up folks. �Neither
seems to realise that they are both right, and that both of their theories
suffer from the fatal flaws pointed out. �That leaves special creation as the
last explanation standing (a top-down approach of a different sort).
I wonder if the readers of Scientific American realise that they are paying a
lot to have brilliant headlines and inspiring pictures pasted above poor
copy?
I have read the bible and it seems to me that it is more about sociology than cosmology or genetics. Oh yes there is that stuff in genesis and that other stuff about armagedon but they are just words without any data to back up the information. We must remember that much of the bible is just mythology used in story telling for teaching people about behaviour and general life skills. So the original intent of most of its writings was good though some parts seem to support one sides political view of their world and trys to use it to support their arguments and justify their actions. It is a big book written over many years and translated many times. It is too bad that so many try to use it for their own purposes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've read some comments on here saying evolution should be viewed as evidence that there is a god. I've grown up knowing evolution as purely scientific and never once have I heard that evolution is proof of a god. The truth is science and religion have been enemies since the dawn of time, you can't base religion off of science or vice versa. I disagree with the person who commented that evolution is proof of God. (By the way, I'm not an atheist, I actually grew up catholic so...yeah.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery good point. As I've read in a book there is no viable proof that all of our historic records are true which leads me to believe that some parts of the bible were exagerated just a little bit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiscfilorux: "Neither seems to realise that they are both right, and that both of their theories suffer from the fatal flaws pointed out."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOverlooking for a minute the fact that these two ideas are actually hypotheses and not theories, maybe you would care to elaborate upon what these 'fatal flaws' actually are, because nowhere in you comment can I find where they have been 'pointed out'. Could be just me, of course.
cfilorux: "That leaves special creation as the last explanation standing"
Why? Because you say so? How does refutation of one or either of the two examples which you give leave creationism (coyly calling it 'special creation', which is merely creationism 2.0, is fooling nobody) as the only feasible explanation of speciation? As you point out, a mere unsubstantiated point of view 'doth not an argument make'. So please substantiate the way in which you consider that 'special creation' *suppressed chortle* is left as the 'last explanation standing'.
I agree there are way over 100 religious theories such as asteroid impacts , tsunamis, indigestion, mammal ate their eggs, they ate each other , they starved , they ate too much etc etc. They are nearly always found encased in sedimentary "water borne" rock but no secular theories considers the possibility of a flood. The ancient anti-God religion evolution was repopularized by men such as Hutton and Lyell and Haeckel, Huxley and Darwin. Hutton and Lyell gave us the Uniformitarian Theory that Darwin used to justify the time needed to repackage the ancient religion of spontaneous generation and evolution Both of them were on a religious mission to dismiss the Bible . Geologist such as the late Steven J. Gould , Niles Eldredge and Derek Agers have stated the lawyer Lyell was a con-man who brainwashed geology into accepting his views.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLyell saw himself as the spiritual saviour of geology, freeing the science from the old dispensation of Moses (Porter, 1976, p. 91).
The evolutionary geologist Derek Ager admitted:
It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student, from Truemans Ostrea/Gryphaea to Carruthers Zaphrentis delanouei, have now been debunked . Similarly, my own experinece [sic] of more than twenty years looking for evolutionary lineages among the Mesozoic Brachiopoda has proved them equally elusive.
Ager, D.V., Proceedings of the Geologists Association, 87(2):131160, 1976.
I think geology got into the hands of the theoreticians who were conditioned by the social and political history of their day more than by observations in the field & . In other words, we have allowed ourselves to be brain-washed into avoiding any interpretation of the past that involves extreme and what might be termed catastrophic processes.
Derek Ager, The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record,
"Palaeobiologists flocked to these scientific visions of a world in a constant state of flux and admixture. But instead of finding the slow, smooth and progressive changes Lyell and Darwin had expected, they saw in the fossil records rapid bursts of change, new species appearing seemingly out of nowhere and then remaining unchanged for
millions of years- hauntingly reminiscent of creation." Niles Eldredge
"Lyell relied heavily upon two bits of cunning to establish
his uniformitarian views as the only true geology."
Steven J Gould
Of course the fact the "evidence " evolution is based on has been debunked by leading evolutionists does not have any effect on their belief .
You said it, evolution is just a theory. Why do evolutionists insist we must blindly agree and follow them? The evidence of intelligent design is all around us and so obvious, but we deny its existence. The Bible has always told us that the earth and other planets are suspended in space. Humans never believed this, and people were put to death for denying that the earth was flat! Modern Humans still attack just as viciously, by ridiculing those that believe in creation. Look at mount St Helens. The canyon formed by the eruption was analysed by `experts` who said iy looked like it was formed over millions of years....meanwhile it was days.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDave
If you were to actually study history such as the Ionian school and the poems of Lucretius as well as the poetry of Erasmus Darwin then you would have to move evolution to the religion class. Certainly nothing Darwin taught besides perhaps racism ids missing from the poems of the Epicurean poet Lucretius 90 years before Christ was born.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe scriptures are crystal clear and written at a 5th grade level. They only get complicated when you presuppose the popular interpretation of historical science is infallible and when there is a conflict the Bible is wrong. There is only one so -called religious "theory" that teaches that a providential creator from outside of time and space created time ,space and matter and that is found in the book of Genesis.
Unless you choose to believe matter created itself and that God evolved it is the only one you need consider.
All other religions {including the ancient anti-God religion of evolution } teach matter was 'Just There ' .
If matter was "just there" it created itself and then created intelligence. There are 2 logical problems with that idea.
First of all nothing can create itself because it would then have pre-existed itself and secondly information has only one source known to science, the willful act of an intelligent mind.
Information cannot arise by itself by natural processes
I find it sadly amusing that so many of those those that present atheism as science, and that is precisely what evolution is , prattle on loudly they are the only true scientists and all who disagree are stupid evil liars simply ignore the scientific laws that were all founded by creationists.
The law of cause and effect -nothing is greater than its cause.
The biogenic law , life only comes from life.
Entropy -everything is degrading
The Law of information science , information can always be traced to an intelligence, it cannot arise spontaneously from matter.
There is no difference between in spontaneous generation and the belief that life was energized by a spark of lightning.
Most modern dictionaries state spontaneous generation and abiogenesis are synonyms . Actually is was much more understandable people could fall for it before we found the DNA molecule .
All this talk of evolution being "science" but when pressed for evidence all that is given is Natural Selection which the ancients knew of, theologians had used for centuries and was first published by the creationist Blyth and anti-biotic/pesticide resistance which are instances of lost information not the gain evolution would require.
daveharris, I urge you to read my previous comment at 02:52 PM on 04/28/09. That tired 'evolution is just a theory' line is now so old that it's growing whiskers. If you're going to go toe-to-toe against evolutionary theory, then at least make the effort to understand more what it is that you are up against. And that, at the very least, includes learning what a scientific theory actually is. And I can hardly believe that you're citing that old Mount St. Helens chestnut. What about all the stuff that didn't suddenly blow its stack? You seem to imagine that 'evolutionists insist we must blindly agree and follow them', well, who exactly is doing all this 'insisting'? Everyone's free to choose their own path. Just don't confuse religious belief with science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Either it has always been here or some being or force created it, period. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, no. That can't be the dichotomy. If there was a "being or force" before "it" then that "being or force" WAS the universe. And THAT has either always been here, or (going back as far as necessary) came from nothing. Take your pick. This is as far as we can get with ignorance.
I hate this argument, as both sides miss fleets of boats.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo begin with, I do believe that God did create all that exists, INCLUDING the natural processes that operate it all, from gravity to light refraction to nuclear decay. Science is our quest to understand the processes which keep this system of matter functioning. Recognizing h0w the sytstem works does not negate the fact that the system had an origin. To study science without acknowledging God is like a mechanic studying a Chevy without acknowledging Detroit. He learns how the car works, but will not admit it was made in Michigan. Instead, he just keeps looking at the car and theorized how it could have come into being all by itself.
Secondly, if there is a God capable of creating all that exists, who am I to limit the speed of that creation? Either he can create or he cannot create. If he can, he can do it in a billion years or six days. If he cannot do it in six days, then he cannot do it at all. Six days? Just as a "new" home is actually composed of ancient components which are processed and assembled (trees cut, ore mined and processed, etc.) in a functional way, so must a "functioning earth" be made up of existing systems (mountains, tall trees, etc.) in order to support life.
Just because I do not understand all of science does not hinder my appreciation of the discoveries scientists make concerning the natural systems to which I am subject. I am comfortable with that. Just because scientists have a good grasp of how some of those systems do work, it should not preclude them from accepting that the matter they study and the principles that dictate that matter's behavior both had to have some source. It had to come from somewhere. It came from God. They can be comfortable with that as well.
Even the Bible applauds the observation of nature and an appropriate response to it (Matthew 24.32;SCIENCE!). So should science recognize that it can study a created thing without denying the fact that that thing has been created.
I am convinced some (probably a minority) are militantly pro-evolution and anti-creation in hopes to free themselves from having to face the responsibility that there might just be a God after all. If he exists, they know they will have to live accountable to him. If they can somehow "prove" there is no God, then they are accountable to nobody and do not have to face any consequence for their lives on earth.
THAT is a helluva gamble. More than I am willing to take.
Apparently the board has been moved to Kansas. All things are created by magic, life is designed and we are sinners. Good luck.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW, if you believe because you are not willing to gamble, then you believe your god is a fool. That is the basic premise of Pascal's wager. If your god can really create the universe, do you really believe he can't see through your phony piety? Seriously, join us over in atheism. It's really OK. At least we're honest about our approach to life and we call it like we see it. There is true wonder to be appreciated once you shed the chains of religion.
Bye all. No smiting.
jaqcp: "I hate this argument, as both sides miss fleets of boats."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I find myself resenting most in jaqcp's comment is the new creationist tactic of feigning an initial dignified neutral position before sliding into the usual creationist silliness further on down, culminating in the gratuitous and erroneous notion that those who do not consider that they are 'accountable' to God live lives of unbridled hedonism. Such sanctimonious absurdities hardly reinforce their own moral position.
jaqcp manages to fill his comment with quite a few other erroneous notions. That Chevy from Detroit is of course a much-used false analogy. We can empirically verify that the Chevy exists, who made it, and where. Not a problem. But the natural world is not Detroit. There are no empirical proofs that, merely because something exists, it was 'made' by a supernatural interventionist agency. The evidence for any such notion is, and always will be, in the subjective eye of the beholder.
And now the phrase, "So should science recognize that it can study a created thing without denying the fact that that thing has been created." Well, the Devil, they say, is in the detail, and in this case the detail is in that innocent-sounding word 'created' that has been slipped in. This is presupposition. 'Created' implies the existence of a creator without first having established the veracity of that 'creator's' existence. Semantics can be anything but innocent, and at times deceitful.
Creationists serially attempt to set up this debate as a religion versus science argument, as jaqcp absurdly does in his concluding paragraph. But it is not, and never was, so simplistic. It is about the conclusions of accredited science versus the beliefs of a vocal fringe Christian minority group who attempt to leapfrog their fundamentalist beliefs into the scientific arena while avoiding the rigorous checks and balances to which science is accountable.
Whether or not an individual scientist is further accountable to a God is an issue which he or she must personally decide, but that is not part of the science.
Many of you that have posted have requested evidence to support the idea of creationism. The bible is riddled with evidence to support itself. For instance, In Genesis 17:12, God specifically directed Abraham to circumcise newborn males on the eighth day. Why the eighth day? We now know vitamin K is responsible for the production (by the liver) of the element known as prothrombin. If vitamin K is deficient, there will be a prothrombin deficiency and hemorrhaging may occur. Oddly, it is only on the fifth through the seventh days of the newborn male’s life that vitamin K (produced by bacteria in the intestinal tract) is present in adequate quantities. Vitamin K, coupled with prothrombin, causes blood coagulation, which is important in any surgical procedure. Holt and McIntosh, observed that a newborn infant has “peculiar susceptibility to bleeding between the second and fifth days of life.... Hemorrhages at this time, though often inconsequential, are sometimes extensive; they may produce serious damage to internal organs, especially to the brain, and cause death from shock and exsanguination”. Obviously, then, if vitamin K is not produced in sufficient quantities until days five through seven, it would be wise to postpone any surgery until some time after that. But why did God specify day eight?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the eighth day, the amount of prothrombin present actually is elevated above one-hundred percent of normal—and is the only day in the male’s life in which this will be the case under normal conditions. If surgery is to be performed, day eight is the perfect day to do it. Vitamin K and prothrombin levels are at their peak.
So my question is, if we have only found this out recently with all of our medical technology, then how could they have possibly known to do this over 6000 years ago unless they were guided by a superior intelligence, "GOD"?
Many of you that have posted have requested evidence to support the idea of creationism. The bible is riddled with evidence to support itself. For instance, In Genesis 17:12, God specifically directed Abraham to circumcise newborn males on the eighth day. Why the eighth day? We now know vitamin K is responsible for the production (by the liver) of the element known as prothrombin. If vitamin K is deficient, there will be a prothrombin deficiency and hemorrhaging may occur. Oddly, it is only on the fifth through the seventh days of the newborn male’s life that vitamin K (produced by bacteria in the intestinal tract) is present in adequate quantities. Vitamin K, coupled with prothrombin, causes blood coagulation, which is important in any surgical procedure. Holt and McIntosh, observed that a newborn infant has “peculiar susceptibility to bleeding between the second and fifth days of life.... Hemorrhages at this time, though often inconsequential, are sometimes extensive; they may produce serious damage to internal organs, especially to the brain, and cause death from shock and exsanguination”. Obviously, then, if vitamin K is not produced in sufficient quantities until days five through seven, it would be wise to postpone any surgery until some time after that. But why did God specify day eight?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the eighth day, the amount of prothrombin present actually is elevated above one-hundred percent of normal—and is the only day in the male’s life in which this will be the case under normal conditions. If surgery is to be performed, day eight is the perfect day to do it. Vitamin K and prothrombin levels are at their peak.
So my question is, if we have only found this out recently with all of our medical technology, then how could they have possibly known to do this over 6000 years ago unless they were guided by a superior intelligence, "GOD"?
Rise over Run: "So my question is, if we have only found this out recently with all of our medical technology, then how could they have possibly known to do this over 6000 years ago unless they were guided by a superior intelligence, "GOD"?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAh, yes, the old 'circumcision-by-divine-guidance' question. The answer is found easily enough, and requires no resort to supernaturally-imparted knowledge. How many infant sons would have bled to death before someone finally said something like, "Hey, guys, maybe we shouldn't do any cutting before the eighth day, because that's when they seem not to bleed so much." Many folk remedies must have been arrived at in the same way, and then when they were proven successful over time, moved up the line to become traditional practices. No divine revelation. No magic. Just simple folk-medicine experience, gained over trial and error.
Rise over Run: "The bible is riddled with evidence to support itself."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUsing the Bible to prove that the Bible is correct? Isn't that circular reasoning?
ambertooth: You certainly can argue a point beautifully. (Perhaps "argue" is not the right word) I only wish I could be so eloquently correct when in similar situations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I learned that Earth was created in 4004 B.C., about the same time that the Mesopotamians invented beer,"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm really sorry, but I couldn't help but giggle at this line...
On a more serious note; I've been interested in dinosaurs for years, particularly when I was little. Hearing this was like a blow to the head. Coconuts? Really!
As much as I respect religion, I still can't help but be upset by some of its "theories". I'm looking forward to future studies that can, maybe shed some more light on how the Earth was created.
Yet we have ourselves another fool that likes to group things in black and white. Not every religious person is an extremist such as the creationists talked about in all these articles on the net. Not every smart religious person is a 'babbling idiot.' If creationists believe that God made the earth, then I am a creationist. However, I do not argue against science and believe that religious texts should not be taken literally. Do not blame religion! For instance, Hinduism is one of the most 'superstitious' religions today yet it has made its believers the most peaceful and earth loving peoples on the planet. Instead, blame the minority of people that love to take their opinions to the ridiculous maximum (such as yourself, who thinks religion is the scum of the earth when in fact it has helped millions be happy and at peace). DO NOT ATTACK PEOPLES' OPINIONS WHEN THEY HAVE NOT WRONGED YOU. Talk down upon creationists all you want but leave religion alone; people like me have not hurt you in any way. Again, do not counter-argue by telling me scientific facts because I will not deny them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Ah, yes, the old 'circumcision-by-divine-guidance' question. The answer is found easily enough, and requires no resort to supernaturally-imparted knowledge. How many infant sons would have bled to death before someone finally said something like, "Hey, guys, maybe we shouldn't do any cutting before the eighth day, because that's when they seem not to bleed so much." Many folk remedies must have been arrived at in the same way, and then when they were proven successful over time, moved up the line to become traditional practices. No divine revelation. No magic. Just simple folk-medicine experience, gained over trial and error." - ambertooth
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou have evidence of this? Or is it just another explanation you came up with to avoid having to be accountable to God?
Oh and by the way, the Bible is accepted by many more people than just christians to be an accurate historical account. Just because you don't believe it, don't put down its credibility.
Rise over Run: "You have evidence of this? Or is it just another explanation you came up with to avoid having to be accountable to God?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll overlook the juvenile last part of your remark and simply state that I have as much evidence for my entirely reasonable hypotheis as you do for your supernatural interventionist claim.
Emily87: "On a more serious note; I've been interested in dinosaurs for years, particularly when I was little. Hearing this was like a blow to the head. Coconuts? Really!"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe illustration accompanying this article of T. rex gleefully contemplating a salad bar is only marginally more frivolous than the wacky creationist suggestion that the beast ate coconuts. Reason enough to check some facts about this tyrannosaur's dentition.
Bioengineering tests carried out at Stamford University (as reported by G.M. Erickson and D.R. Carter in Scientific American, vol. 281, #3) have measured the bite of a T. rex at 13,000 newtons, or a staggering 2,900 pounds of bite force per side of the jaw. And that was a conservative estimate. This makes the bite of everyone's favorite dinosaur by far the most powerful known in the animal kingdom, living or extinct. Them sure must've been mean mothers of coconuts.
But that's not all. Further tests by W.L. Abler (reported upon in the same issue of SciAm) ascertain that the two small rows of serrations along the leading and back edges of these massive teeth served to trap fragments of shredded flesh between them, where they would have putrified. Even prey that made an initially-survivable getaway would probably have succumbed to septicemia. These thoroughly carnivorous blood poisoning techniques can be found in such animals as today's komodo dragons, which make a useful analog for such fossil forms.
All this science, of course, merely confirms what common sense dictates when contemplating the massive fossil skull of a T. rex with its appalling prey-processing jaws: it very definitely was a carnivore, and (although I'm grateful that I'm not in a position to put this hypothesis to the test) it almost certainly had a pretty rank case of halitosis.
Rise over Run: "Just because you don't believe it (the Bible), don't put down its credibility."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you think that I am doing so, then you misunderstand what I have written. I am questioning claims which are asserted as being proven, but which in reality cannot be verified. As I had previously pointed out to you, you cannot use the Bible to prove that the Bible is accurate. You can believe that it is so, but then it is religious faith, and not any kind of demonstrable verification.
It's a shame that so many people waste their lives seeking that one shed of "proof" of God existing and they don't see him so evident in their daily lives. Trust me, take that first step on faith, and you will not require proof. You will KNOW and understand that God is with you and around you everywhere you go.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDon't go to think that I am a radicalist creationist and that I put down science without a second thought. I am an astrophysics student for the University of TX. I love science and I understand it in and out. But people have got to STOP trying to use science to disprove God. They need to open their eyes and look for him in their lives. Science needs to be aimed at understanding the universe that He has given us and not at removing him from our lives.
It's a shame that so many people waste their lives seeking that one shed of "proof" of God existing and they don't see him so evident in their daily lives. Trust me, take that first step on faith, and you will not require proof. You will KNOW and understand that God is with you and around you everywhere you go.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDon't go to think that I am a radicalist creationist and that I put down science without a second thought. I am an astrophysics student for the University of TX. I love science and I understand it in and out. But people have got to STOP trying to use science to disprove God. They need to open their eyes and look for him in their lives. Science needs to be aimed at understanding the universe that He has given us and not at removing him from our lives.
Rise over Run: "But people have got to STOP trying to use science to disprove God."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo make things clear: it is not, and never has been, the concern of science either to prove or to disprove any religious belief, the reason being that a religious belief is something that neither can be proven nor disproven. It therefore cannot be falsified (refuted), which is now widely viewed as a prerequisite in science. So, that science at times appears to conflict with a religious belief is just a by-product of science 'doing what it does', and not an intention.
Conversely, the fringe trend with such fundamentalist movements as creationism is to attempt to attack specific areas of science which they perceive as undermining their Biblical literalist beliefs. But they do not realise that any amount of attacks upon a scientific theory will not remove it from science.
So, Rise over Run, if you comment on a science site and use a religious argument to bolster your case, you should not be surprised if your comments are called into question. But this does not mean that someone who is questioning your statements (as I am) is 'against' God. Of course I am not. I am, however, questioning the veracity of what you claim when your claims clearly are non-falsifiable.
In the example which you mentioned, it is beyond either proving or disproving that the tradition of circumcision on the eighth day came about as the result of divine or supernatural advice. The tradition, as I suggested, could equally viably have had a simple (and very practical) secular origin, which you in your turn cannot disprove. In fact, unless you can offer indisputable evidence for a supernatural agency in the first place, from the point of view of science, my explanation is by far the more likely.
Your comment of three days ago began by remarking that many "have requested evidence to support the idea of creationism." I for one am still waiting for that evidence.
'It's a shame that so many people waste their lives seeking that one shed of "proof" of God existing and they don't see him so evident in their daily lives. Trust me, take that first step on faith, and you will not require proof. You will KNOW and understand that God is with you and around you everywhere you go.'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRise over Run:
I was actually born and raised as a christian for fifteen years of my life when I had the startling revelation that the practice of christianity / judaeism is the source of more pain, suffering, and misery on this planet than all other events, combined. Your god may be real and he may not - I personally don't feel I have any authority to speak on the matter. But if he is real, I can tell you I don't want any part of his business. Now to the real point.
Creationists need to get over themselves. Every so-called counter-argument against evolution and geology (age of the world and all that) and the origins of the universe is driven purely by self-interested attempts to preserve their sense of significance in the world. Really, the suggestion that scientists are actually -pursuing- the death of belief in your God is laughable and offensive. The quest for knowledge is not driven by a need to feel superior to others. It is about discovering how and why the world works the way it does, and applying that information in ways that improve conditions of life for all of us.
'Don't go to think that I am a radicalist creationist and that I put down science without a second thought. I am an astrophysics student for the University of TX. I love science and I understand it in and out. But people have got to STOP trying to use science to disprove God. They need to open their eyes and look for him in their lives. Science needs to be aimed at understanding the universe that He has given us and not at removing him from our lives.'
This is a very poorly manufactured dodge. I can only assume you are somehow trying to avoid being labelled, but really your point of view in this talk speaks volumes. If you truly understood the purpose of science, you would have known better than to treat scientists like witch-hunters.
Having read galaxy_man's comments, I am prompted to add this further note. Coincidentally, I also walked away from a very Christian background at the same age as galaxy_man (I am now 60+). My original decision, which caused much upset at the time, was to do with tenet-of-faith issues with which I found myself in fundamental and irresolvable conflict. Since then, I have followed my own spiritual path and have not once looked back.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRise over Run, because someone endorses the findings of science does not mean that he or she is bereft of spiritual values (and is certainly not the lesser were this to be the case). Not everyone who values the hard work and dedication that is essential to uncover those findings still has to "take that first step on faith". And certainly not everyone included in the above are "wasting their lives seeking that one shred of "proof" of God existing". You presume too much about those whom you do not even know.
(Rise over Run, please do not counter with 'there's no such thing as an ex-Christian'. I've heard that presumptuous line once too often.)
"But people have got to STOP trying to use science to disprove God. They need to open their eyes and look for him in their lives. Science needs to be aimed at understanding the universe that He has given us and not at removing him from our lives."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry to pile on Rise over Run, but you have stated too many things that are wrong for a person who loves science.
If you are a true scientist, you don't go looking for things to prove that god exists. You start with a hypothesis (perhaps that there is a god), then you go looking for facts. The facts will either support or refute (a key part of science) your hypothesis. You, as a person who loves science, will accept either outcome with (mostly) equal joy, for that is the love of science. Either outcome will have contributed to the advancement of scientific understanding.
When you start with a dogma; i.e. there is a god - no possibility of being wrong - all facts must bend to your dogma. A child who just misses a rock when he fell, missed becasue god intervened (this "miracle was told to me by one of my wife's friends, I supposed (to myself) that their god pushed their child out of the tree and droped him just shy of the rock to make them pray more). A rainbow appears and it's god showing his presence. You get the point.
If you "want" to see god, you will see god everywhere, not because there is god everywhere, but because you believe god is everywhere. It is self fulfilling and allows you to "prove" your dogma everyday regardless of facts. All a true believer needs is a small bit of something we don't quite understand yet and that will invalidate everything we do understand such that nothing is valid. Therefore, god is the only valid thing. This is not science, this is religion.
When you are ready to reject dogma and accept facts at face value, you can call yourself a scientist. Until then, just be true to yourself, a faith based creationist who uses the tools of science to bend facts to support his dogma.
Consciousness creates matter. That is what both sides of the evolutionary argument fail to understand. Consciousness creates matter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjdchittick: "Consciousness creates matter."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMerely stating something will not necessarily make your statement true, jdchittick. You have to supply validated arguments, examples, and so on. Otherwise anybody could claim anything, and there would be no further need for exposition. Oh, wait, that's what creationists usually do anyway. So you're a creationist, and you make an unvalidated claim that consciousness creates matter. How? What are the cerebral mechanics involved? Please expound further.
Do you mean personal consciousness? Does this mean that were I to visualize a Camaro, or an iPod, or some other desired object (readers can supply their own wish object at this point), that it would materialise? Well, this clearly does not happen (otherwise what is left of the market economy would collapse totally), so not all consciousness does create matter. Do you mean consciousness generally? If so, what sort of consciousness, exactly? Collective human consciousness? Or disembodied consciousness? Cosmic consciousness, perhaps? Ah, now we seem to be getting warmer. Do you mean God? Creationists these days are so coy about using overt religious terms.
And to be clear: what you refer to as 'both sides' does not exist. There is accredited science, and there is a fringe (but disproportionately vocal) minority who oppose specific areas of science on religious grounds.
Shermer's historical name-throwing journalism is just that and should be taken as a publicity-seeking superficial analysis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr.d
To Dr.d: Any fringe religious movement masquerading as science that puts forward such screwball idiocies as T. rex existing on a diet of coconuts and other such derisory pseudoscientific claptrap (dinosaurs aboard Noah's Ark, anyone?) richly deserves all the name-throwing ridicule that can be heaped upon it. More power to Michael Shermer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCollins is wrong, Purdom stated, because he does not accept the biblical history in Genesis, so hes beginning with his ideas about what happened in the past rather than what God said happened in the past, so hes interpreting that data in light of that starting point. '
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this' Collins is wrong, Purdom stated, because “he does not accept the biblical history in Genesis, so he’s beginning with his ideas about what happened in the past rather than what God said happened in the past, so he’s interpreting that data in light of that starting point.” '
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPurdom says that one's interpretation of data depends on one's worldview (and, to a certain extent, that is hard to argue with). But, the issue she has with Collins is that he tries to interpret his observations (that is, think) *at all*.
Purdom's God is the Christian God, the creator of Universe, every last galaxy, atom and molecular biologist in it. And yet, she *knows* what God said! What incredible hubris!
Collins is wrong, Purdom stated, because he does not accept the biblical history in Genesis, so hes beginning with his ideas about what happened in the past rather than what God said happened in the past, so hes interpreting that data in light of that starting point. '
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNothing to do with this article, but designers of this site should do something about comment posting mechanism. It is too easy to mistakenly post comment or part of it several times.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Consciousness creates matter."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd what creates consciousness?
"Trust me, take that first step on faith, and you will not require proof. You will KNOW and understand that God is with you and around you everywhere you go."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhich particular faith? There is no shortage of them, you know, with the one derived from ancient Jewish mythology just being most popular at the moment (and with various versions of it being at each other's throat).
The creation debate (e.g. Skeptic, May 2009) has become rather tiresome because both sides are asking the wrong questions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe first question to ask is What is the purpose of the Genesis document for its original readers? Before you answer, remember that the age of scientific inquiry is rather less than a thousand years old, and before that people did not think in terms of scientific process. So the Genesis document, written more than 3000 years ago, cannot possibly have been intended to convey details about the process by which the Earth came to be. Nobody would have understood that. My answer is that its purpose was to state that we are here by plan and design, and that we need to consider how that should impact on how we live. That central theme is clothed in enough narrative detail to make it into a story, which is how information has been transmitted at all stages of human history. So it is futile either to claim scientific accuracy of the account, or to criticise the apparent lack of it. That is not what it is about. It makes no attempt to be a scientific document.
The second question is whether the account has significance for us today. Christians (myself included) and Jews assert that it does, and that the message is pretty much unchanged.
Warwick Smith
GNS Science
Lower Hutt
New Zealand
To WarwickSmith: What, exactly, are these "wrong questions"? And who here is "criticising the apparent lack" of science in Genesis? You do not name any specific commenter, but that is not what I for one have written here. In fact, eight days ago I actually commented here to someone else that "it is not, and never has been, the concern of science either to prove or to disprove any religious belief". What is under criticism is the misuse of science in the name of specific religious fundamentalist movements, and it does not follow that what happens in Dr. Shermer's magazine is what happens in Scientific American.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I have before pointed out on this site (and in spite of your opening sentence), there are no "both sides" here. There is accredited science, and there is a fringe minority (but disproportionately vocal) Biblical literalist belief which attempts to leapfrog its way into scientific respectability while circumventing the checks and balances to which the rest of science is accountable.
So the first question to ask is not, as you suggest, "What is the purpose of the Genesis document for its original readers?" This question might have relevance to theological scholarship, but has none whatever to the present topic. Perhaps instead the real questions that need to be asked are: 'why do creationists feel so threatened that they willfully deride accredited science?' 'What happens to the human mind when it flies in the face of existing knowledge in favor of a Dark Ages mentality?' 'Why are certain religious factions so terrified of change?'
Perhaps, instead of your own two questions, which have no direct bearing on the science, you might attempt an answer to these questions, which are certainly more immediately relevant to the accompanying article.
Be assured that many Christians, especially those of us in scientific careers, are annoyed, frustrated, embarrassed, disappointed and saddened by the efforts of Creationists to use the Biblical account in what I believe are inappropriate ways. I agree with much of what you have said, and I have the same questions to Creationists. But my comment was addressed more to the wider debate on Creationism, with the Shermer article only as an example, because I also find in the scientific community an implied criticism of the Biblical account, sometimes veiled and sometimes more overt, as being of no use because it is not scientifically accurate. It makes no such claim. Scientists need to recognise that science is not the be-all and end-all of life, and that it helps to take the scientific blinders off from time to time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWarwickSmith: "..I also find in the scientific community an implied criticism of the Biblical account, sometimes veiled and sometimes more overt, as being of no use because it is not scientifically accurate."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps you move in different circles to myself, because I have never encountered this except in criticism of creationist attacks upon science. Scientists just don't occupy themselves with religious beliefs as part of the science. They have no reason to. You have made your point that the Book of Genesis makes no claim to being science, but why extend that point to include the unestablished presumption that scientists generally wear 'blinders'?
While I understand your point, I do think that to suggest that the scientific community as whole (which is what you are stating) is questioning the scientific accuracy of the Book of Genesis is way too far-fetched. The scientists with whom I have worked have been all shades of personal belief and non-belief, but this has no direct bearing upon the science.
And who are you to say that scientists "need to recognise that science is not the be-all and end-all of life"? One can make the same statement about any profession, and balance is desirable in all endeavors. But whether that balance is sought in religious pursuits, or in family matters, or by practicing a martial art, or just by tinkering around in one's garage, is a matter of choice for the individual.
Why would you take any notice of Shermer on this issue? He is an atheist. How could he possibly be objective on the issue of creation?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd this most recent criticism of creationists contradicts his previous cricticism--that they just say "God did it." He wants it both ways. Methinks the atheist doth protest too much.
Good article, highlighting what creationists wants to forget.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ Pyriteglow:
"He is an atheist. How could he possibly be objective on the issue of creation?"
Hmm, well, Shermer was originally fundamentalist, and it still shows as his skepticism has limits. But aside from that this is a skeptics column, not an atheist column.
That doesn't matter however since both skepticism and atheism is compatible with science facts. While as the article shows, creationism isn't.
"they just say "God did it.""
That is indeed an adequate description of the anti-scientific stance of a believer, either ignoring or giving up on science. This article goes on to describe the actual factual errors, which aren't identical. Shermer puts the spotlight on the apologist tendency to ignore differences by filtering supportive facts out while eliminating scientific eliminative predictions - either differences with science or differences among themselves. Apologism isn't rational, it doesn't lead to knowledge, but it is a failure <i>in extremis</i>.
Torbj�rn Larsson:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's the evolutionist that is anti-scientific. They have no idea how life began, how information was programmed onto the DNA, how photosynthesis evolved, where the eukaryotic cell came from, how sex evolved, how sight evolved, etc. But rather than question their belief in evolution they say, "We know evolution did it. Isn't evolution wonderful."
The blindness of the atheist.
Pyriteglow, you are one in a very, very long line of creationists who mistakenly think that attacking evolutionary theory is the route to go. But attacking a scientific theory will not even dent it. You have to provide a working hypothesis of your own and submit this hypothesis within accredited science. If your hypothesis is considered viable by your scientist peers, then it might move on to become a theory that will supercede the theory to which you object. Because that is the only way that things are going to happen for you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBelieve me, ticking off a list of evolutionary theory's imagined shortcomings which have been garnered from some creationist website is just not going to do it.
@ Pyriteglow:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It's the evolutionist that is anti-scientific."
Bogus. See ambertooth comment for details.
Also, science isn't atheism, as a method it isn't any more atheistic than a hammer, it just leads to it. (As evidenced by PEW statistics on scientists.)
Have we Gish galloped enough now?
There really should be an analog to Godwin's law, forfeiting by "argumentum ad Gishium".
unfortunately, we are just too self centered as a spieces to accept that we are neither the most important part of nature nor the protagonist of earths history..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe world used to exist before as, and will go on existing after we will be gone.
The Hindu scriptures are much more accurate as far as the age of the universe is concerned. I don't know the exact figure but it definitely is in billions of years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe that there is a critical mistake here that almost no one seems to be noticing: context.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen the Old Testament was written, namely Genesis, it was written not to a people who was conformed by PhDs, but to a group of simple individuals whose knowledge of the world around them was rather limited. Hence, had God began at relativity and the Big Bang rather than Adam and Eve, they would have been left even more confused than when He began explaining them. God gave the Hebrews an answer that was not a lie, but instead was a simple truth. If a 1-year-old asked you why it hurts when he falls to the ground, would you began at Newton's Second Law? Or would you rather just tell him something simple? I believe we would all refrain to telling him that the ground makes you have "boo-boos" when you fall. Are we lying with this response? I don't think we are. Did 1-year-old get the idea that he should do his best not fall? Probably yes.
Rougarou, look up Abiogenesis, it seeks to explain how the first forms of life formed from nothing, as you say, or rather, rudimentary building blocks which over many billions of years formed the proteins in RNA strands - the precurser to DNA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience is on the case of answering questions where religion passes the buck to God, in their "too hard basket".
Why is it impossible to believe that science and religion can coincide? Is it so ridiculous to think that maybe there really is a link? Nonetheless, if religion gives people hope than what gives atheists the right to try and take that hope away. Why mock someone for what they believe if it helps them get through life? I don't understand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou know, something is missing from all this discussion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomething like common ground, or what we do agree on.
Despite the popular belief that life is common throughout the galaxy, if books like "Rare Earth" by Peter Ward are correct, earth like planets and advanced life is not only extremely rare, but may be virtually unique in the galaxy, if not the visible Universe. When you take into account all the expected dead zones, from globular clusters that have millions of evolved giant stars that are too hot, to Elliptical and small galaxies that are too metal-poor to have inner planets like Earth. And then add in the planet factors that are needed to sustain life, like plate tectonics, a magnetic field, the right distance from a star, photo-synthesis, etc, its a wonder how we even exist at all. In a Universe that is 13.5 billion years old, on a planet that life evolved over 4.5 billion years, when you review all the historical data and current theories from the Big Bang, to Quantum Mechanics, something seems to be missing. And its not the Anthropic Principle or Intelligent design.
After all is said on both sides, its still truely wonderous to be alive.
As a creationist, it becomes imperative to accept that believeing God created all things requires us to accept that we cannot know all the mechanics of how he did it. I am not overly bothered by now knowing precisely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvolutionist must also accept that IF there is a Creator, he had to create not only the physical things, but the physics of the things to perpetuate the systems and cycles (precipitation, gravity, photosynthesis, time itself, etc. If there exists a Creator able to create physical matter, then the interaction of such matter also had to be orchestrated (hence, created). In such a case, in order to create a self-sustaining planet and galaxy, he would have to place celestial bodies where the gravity would keep it in place. he would have to create light sources and, in the case of distant ones, create the light in between until the light emitted could reach its "target." Of course this sounds fantastic (meaning "foolish" to many readers), but if God created AT ALL, he had to create IT ALL, the physical and the physics. If he did, how would it look on the first day? It would have to have functioning cycles of growth, decay, weathering, etc. In short, it would not be a "brand-new" earth, but an existing earth.
Either God did create it all, or he created nothing at all. I am not trying to argue that point. I am just saying that if he did create it, it would have to be a functioning, "aged" system of fully formed mountains, trees, rivers, volcanos, canyons, valleys, etc. It would be a pre-built home which may be new to me, but is made up of wood that was born 20-100 years ago before it was milled, and gypsum wall board that sat for "who-knows-how-long" before being mined, presses, shipped, stored, sold, installed, etc. over the course of a year. Even a "new" house is built of "existing" components.
In order for a created earth to be viable for human life, it has to be built using existing, functioning, "aged" systems in place. Thus, a new earth would "look" much older.
I believe the the Lord created the Earth and I appreciate Science's attempts to understand the systems and substance of that creation. But as my lack of scientific knowledge does not negate that knowledge, neither does Science's failure to recognize the Creator in creation negate the reality of my relationship with him. No matter how old the Earth is (or isn't), I am still made pure through the blood of Christ, and have an eternal home waiting for me in Heaven, as well as a few answers to my many questions. Care to join me?
energy in the universe. stars. e=mc^2
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article is clearly biased towards endorsing evolution. Evolution is a farce and good science asserts that you have to separate fact from fiction. Darwin's theory of evolution, which has been proven,t ime and again, to be borrowed from early Greek philosophers w, is nothing more than sci-fiction gone amok. God created the universe & everything in it. The only thing worth reading in this article are the scriptures stated, which are 100% accurate. Science needs to wake up and smell the proverbial java brewing--Darwin was wrong!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMonkey see, monkey do! Michael Shermer said: "A skeptic engages three types of creationists who claim science supports their beliefs, yet they contradict one another."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFunny thing, I am repeatedly confronted by evolutionist who have different versions of what supposedly happened in the unobserved past. In fact, if one reads comments by the experts on human evolution such as Oxnard, Olsen, Leakey, Walker, Thorne, Wolpoll, Groves, Johanson etc they have different opinions as to what fossils belong to the family tree, which tree they belong to, and how the data should be intrepreted. Indeed, the Australian Museum publication on human evolution, Tracks Through Time, has at least six of the different versions to pick from. The reality is that all evidence presented in support of evolution is entirely based on naturalistic presuppositions, conjecture, interpretations, assumptions, explanations, inferences, and sheer speculation.
It is ultimately historical scientism "by explanations", or the more correctly titled "The Inference Theory". In fact there exists not a single piece of testable, observable empirical evidence that conclusively establishes evolution as a fact, leaving no alternative option, God included.
No one in all of time has ever observed on creature turn into a creature of a different kind. In short, fruit fly in, fruit fly out; bacteria in, bacteria out; human in,human out; monkey in, monkey out. And every variation and adaptation acts to preserve the lifeform as it is, including viruses, and not change it into anything other than a virus.
Every breed in recorded history knows that there are natural boundaries beyond which lifeforms cannot reproduce, hybrids included.
There is absolutely no way that chance mutations and blind mindless natural selection would ever have the necessary overall perspective to evolve different lifeforms in different ways, at different rates, at different times, or not at all (stasis), to ultimately produce an overall diverse inter-dependent environment, and co-dependent finely balanced ecosystems. That would require all the insights and attributes of deity.
Furthermore, where would the additional information and DNA come from, when mutations are a corruption of "existing" DNA, with no other DNA available to corrupt.
I have noted that Shermer is an expert at shooting himself in the foot. As does anyone who asserts that everything came about purely by natural laws and material processes, when there is absolutely no answer as to where even natural law itself came from.
Michael Shermer said: "A skeptic engages three types of creationists who claim science supports their beliefs, yet they contradict one another."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMonkey see, monkey do!
I am repeatedly confronted by evolutionist who have different versions of what supposedly happened in the unobserved past. If one reads comments by leading experts on human evolution such as Oxnard, Olsen, Leakey, Walker, Thorne, Wolpoll, Groves, Johanson etc they have different opinions as to what fossils belong to the family tree, which tree they belong to, and how the data should actually be interpreted. The Australian Museum publication on human evolution Tracks Through Time has at least six different versions to pick from.
I have met and argued with a few individuals lately who state that computers and more broadly, technology is the source of evil in society. It's sad that this subculture thinks that learning is a bad,evil thing. "If god wanted us to know this we would have been born with this knowledge thus not being troubled with that pesky learning thing". Somewhat understandably these people don't seem to possess much intelligence, at least in the ways I have learned what intelligence is. I wonder if this resistance against science, technology, math etc.. is some tool to comfort them in light of the possible lack of intelligence as current society measures it, thus feeling better about either their resistance to wanting to learn or their inability to learn. I realize that this is a somewhat arrogant stance, but I intuitively (yes I know, it is somewhat of a dichotomy..using intuition to formulate an opinion ) "feel" that this is at least generally the case (my god..feelings!! Uck!!)..Ok I am unreasonably babbling. Kirk out. :-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou know why this whole discussion and all of your
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiscomments are pointless? There are many reasons. Let me
enumerate a few...
1) You're human. THat's a huge strike against you right
off the bat. It's not like you're a super intelligent
1,000 I.Q. universe traveling alien. Instead, you're
little more than barely consious pond scum which does not
qualify you to have a worthwhile opinion on anything.
Look at the bandwidth of your consciousness for example.
You cannot even process more than one miniscule thought at
a time. Your brain filters out 99% of what comes in
through your senses because your puny consious bandwidth
cannot handle it. Try listening to a book-on-tape while
also reading a book, and see if you can tell me what both
were about when you're finished.
99.9999% of the humans on this planet are so friggin stupid they won't even produce a single technological, scientific, or noteworthy invention in their entire life.
After tens of thousands of years of evolution, we still
cannot establish a definition of what life even is, or how
to identify it. You think you're smart? Gimme a break.
So now that we've established you're pretty darn stupid,
lets move to the next point.
2) Assume their is a God. So what. That doesn't mean
that you have an eternal soul. Your still a steaming pile
of flesh that will evaporate into nothingness after you
die.
3) Assume that there is life after death. So what. That
doesn't mean there is a God or creator. It simply means
you've moved to another state that you're not familiar
with and cannot establish anything about it's source or
purpose.
4) You incorrectly assume that life has inherent value.
That completely rediculous ludicrous invalid false premise
starts you down the path to a whole pantload of other
false conclusions. I'll leave it to your small mind to
figure out what those are.
Scientific perspectives are an ever evolving set of discoveries. Not having final scientific answers does not prove scientific theories wrong, it only proves they don't have all the answers, yet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvolution, as a valuable concept, is continuing to guide us in our explorations as we search for more partial answers. Read "Darwins Paw"
Someone below suggested that this article is "biased" against the people who took the time to blather nonsense at us. Unfortunately, I've seen this attitude frequently. Science is incredibly and unwaveringly biased towards evidence and the scientific method. This is not evidence of a conspiracy or people being mean to a particular idea. If you want to sway scientific thinking away from the current consensus, it must withstand scrutiny with observations, predictions and facts. Otherwise it's just someone talking about how it "seems to them" with nothing more of any substance on which to base reality. I'm no scientist, but I understand the basics of why it needs to be biased against bad methodology in favor of good methodology. The conclusion must not be pre-ordained, but let's go about the process in a legitimate way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ John Heininger - Shermer is a psychologist, not an evolutionary biologist, first of all. A decent guy also, from the one time I met him. Not sure why he irks you. But speaking of shooting yourself in the foot, you say "there exists not a single piece of testable, observable empirical evidence that conclusively establishes evolution as a fact". In a weird way, you're right. Rarely in science is there one single thing that leads to the next. What we have in the theory of evolution is a mountain of evidence from divergent fields which all supports the near incontrovertible conclusion of common ancestry. We will learn more over time. But the only you could hope to disprove it is with good science, all of which at this point agrees with it. Thus most people who disagree are by way of religion. Unfortunately for your religion, you are dragging it down, not allowing it to progress with modernity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this