We got one in the comments, a pompous ass named Darin Reisler who popped in to announce of evolution that “When the evidence is looked at beyond the surface level- it fails,” and to back this up he offered a string of quotes from “prominent evolutionists”.
Man, Darin is a contemptible liar, and incompetent on top of that. It’s one of the things that annoys me most about creationists: they are anti-scholars, people who lie and distort to reinforce prior erroneous conceptions, and they really think they’re scoring points by pretending that great minds in biology agree with them, when they don’t.
Darin begins with Darwin, of course. And of course the only part of this substantial section of the Origin of Species that he uses is the tiny fragment I’ve put in bold below.
Although geological
research has undoubtedly revealed the former existence of many
links, bringing numerous forms of life much closer together, it does
not yield the infinitely many fine gradations between past and present
species required on the theory; and this is the most obvious of the
many objections which may be urged against it. Why, again, do whole
groups of allied species appear, though this appearance is often
false, to have come in suddenly on the successive geological stages?
Although we now know that organic beings appeared on this globe, at
a period incalculably remote, long before the lowest bed of the
Cambrian system was deposited, why do we not find beneath this
system great piles of strata stored with the remains of the
progenitors of the Cambrian fossils? For on the theory, such strata
must somewhere have been deposited at these ancient and utterly
unknown epochs of the world’s history.I can answer these questions and objections only on the
supposition that the geological record is far more imperfect than most
geologists believe. The number of specimens in all our museums is
absolutely as nothing compared with the countless generations of
countless species which have certainly existed. The parent-form of any
two or more species would not be in all its characters directly
intermediate between its modified offspring, any more than the
rock-pigeon is directly intermediate in crop and tail between its
descendants, the pouter and fantail pigeons. We should not be able
to recognise a species as the parent of another and modified
species, if we were to examine the two ever so closely, unless we
possessed most of the intermediate links; and owing to the
imperfection of the geological record, we have no just right to expect
to find so many links. If two or three, or even more linking forms
were discovered, they would simply be ranked by many naturalists as so
many new species, more especially if found in different geological
sub-stages, let their differences be ever so slight. Numerous existing
doubtful forms could be named which are probably varieties; but who
will pretend that in future ages so many fossil links will be
discovered, that naturalists will be able to decide whether or not
these doubtful forms ought to be called varieties? Only a small
portion of the world has been geologically explored. Only organic
beings of certain classes can be preserved in a fossil condition, at
least in any great number. Many species when once formed never undergo
any further change but become extinct without leaving modified
descendants; and the periods, during which species have undergone
modification, though long as measured by years, have probably been
short in comparison with the periods during which they retain the same
form. It is the dominant and widely ranging species which vary most
frequently and vary most, and varieties are often at first local- both
causes rendering the discovery of intermediate links in any one
formation less likely. Local varieties will not spread into other
and distant regions until they are considerably modified and improved;
and when they have spread, and are discovered in a geological
formation, they appear as if suddenly created there, and will be
simply classed as new species. Most formations have been
intermittent in their accumulation; and their duration has probably
been shorter than the average duration of specific forms. Successive
formations are in most cases separated from each other by blank
intervals of time of great length; for fossiliferous formations
thick enough to resist future degradations can as a general rule be
accumulated only where much sediment is deposited on the subsiding bed
of the sea. During the alternate periods of elevation and of
stationary level the record will generally be blank. During these
latter periods there will probably be more variability in the forms of
life; during periods of subsidence, more extinction.With respect to the absence of strata rich in fossils beneath the
Cambrian formation, I can recur only to the hypothesis given in the
tenth chapter; namely, that though our continents and oceans have
endured for an enormous period in nearly their present relative
positions, we have no reason to assume that this has always been the
case; consequently formations much older than any now known may lie
buried beneath the great oceans. With respect to the lapse of time not
having been sufficient since our planet was consolidated for the
assumed amount of organic change, and this objection, as urged by
Sir William Thompson, is probably one of the gravest as yet
advanced, I can only say, firstly, that we do not know at what rate
species change as measured by years, and secondly, that many
philosophers are not as yet willing to admit that we know enough of
the constitution of the universe and of the interior of our globe to
speculate with safety on its past duration.
As Darwin often did, what he was doing was bringing up an objection critics could make, that there is no perfect and complete series of transitions in the geological record, and then carefully addressing that argument with substantial discussion of the problem (which I’ve only excerpted in small part above — one of the strengths of the Origin is the way Darwin hammers down ever small, potential problem at great length.)
Then Darin “quotes” Julian Huxley.
I suppose the reason we leaped at The Origin of Species was because the
idea of God interfered with our sexual mores.
This isn’t actually a quote mine — it’s a complete fabrication from the professional liars at Coral Ridge Ministries, who are misquoting an already garbled bit of nonsense from Henry Morris. The game of telephone is so much more exciting when the players are committed to intentionally mangling the phrase being passed around!
Next, he brings up Thomas Huxley.
The primary and direct evidence in favor of evolution can be furnished
only by paleontology.
That’s another quote mine, all right. It comes from a long article by TH Huxley in which he is providing a retrospective on the state of evolutionary thinking 20 years after the publication of the Origin, and in fact what Huxley is doing is explaining the first quote from Darwin that the brainless Darin Reisler was using. I think we can trust that Darin has read neither of the documents he is quoting. Amusingly, what Huxley does right after that comment is point out that opponents of Darwin’s ideas have been quote-mining him!
Nothing could have been more useful to the opposition than this characteristically candid avowal [Darwin’s admission that the fossil record was incomplete], twisted as it immediately was into an admission that the writer’s views were contradicted by the facts of paleontology. But, in fact, Mr. Darwin made no such admission. What he says in effect is, not that paleontological evidence is against him, but that it is not distinctly in his favor; and without attempting to attenuate the fact, he accounts for it by the scantiness and the imperfection of that evidence.
And then much of Huxley’s article is precisely about the accumulation of new paleontological evidence since Darwin made that comment.
Finally, Darin offers this quote.
“The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that
evolution is based on faith alone.”-Professor D.M.S. Watson (famous evolutionist)
Uh, who? Apparently, he’s not that famous. Interestingly, if you look up that quote, you’ll find creationists attributing it to “T.L. Moor”, “Louis T. More of Princeton”, “Louis T. Moore, Professor of Paleontology, Princeton University”, and “Prof. Louis T. Moore of the Univ. of Cincinnati speaking at Princeton Univ” — I have no idea who Moor/More/Moore is, either. Only creationist sources seem to trot out this particular mystery quote from an ambiguous source.
Names, quotes, who cares…to the creationist, you can just mix and match to get what you want. There is a different quote that is more accurately attribute to D.M.S. Watson, who was a comparative zoologist working in the 1920s. Creationists are fond of this quote from a 1929 Nature article where, again, they only quote the bits in bold:
There is no branch of zoology in which assumption has played a greater, or evidence a less, part than in the study of presumed adaptations. The implication which lies behind any statement that such and such a structure is an adaptation is that under the existing environmental conditions an individual possessing it has a greater chance of survival than one which has not.
The extraordinary lack of evidence to show that the incidence of death under natural conditions is controlled by small differences of the kind which separate species from one another or, what is the same thing from an observational point of view, by physiological differences correlated with such structural features, renders it difficult to appeal to natural selection as the main or indeed an important factor in bringing about the evolutionary changes which we know to have occurred. It may be important, it may indeed be the principle which overrides all others ; but at present its real existence as a phenomenon rests on an extremely slender basis.
The extreme difficulty of obtaining the necessary data for any quantitative estimation of the efficiency of natural selection makes it seem probable that this theory will be re-established, if it be so, by the collapse of alternative explanations which are more easily attacked by observation and experiment. If so, it will present a parallel to the theory of evolution itself, a theory universally accepted not because it be can proved by logically coherent evidence to be true but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.
What he is pointing out is that alternative theories have collapsed leaving selection the victor by default, and he’s complaining about the dearth of quantifiable observation of selection in nature … from the perspective of 80 years ago. Before the neo-Darwinian synthesis. About the time Sewall Wright, RA Fisher, and JBS Haldane were getting around to working out the predictive mathematical tools of population genetics. Dr Watson picked a really bad time to make that particular complaint!
I’m sure Darin is sitting there smugly thinking that he has shot down the case for evolution with his selection of poorly understood and dishonestly twisted quotes from sources he has not read, but he has done no such thing. He has merely exposed his own shallow thinking and lack of intellectual integrity…that he is an arrogant fraud.
Well you know what the Bible says,
“Quote not, lest you be quoted.”
I smell Dunning Kruger.
Perhaps Mr. Reisler could cite a single peer-reviewed scientific research paper that provides evidence for his views? Well, no, he can’t, but he got his own thread. One blue-footed booby prize for the troll.
One more poser with AiG on his face.
I recommend Christine Garwood’s book Flat Earth: the history of an infamous idea for some amusing parallels to the persistence and invincible ignorance* of the current crowd of creationists.
(*I know I’m not using the epithet in its original meaning.)
They have no choice but to quotemine, because they don’t actually read their “sources,” they only read dishonest sources like James Kennedy–whose sole purpose is to rubbish evolution, heedless of constraints such as mere honesty.
If they knew anything about the matter, they very likely would not be creationists (really, most creationists can’t stand to read the other side, let alone care to do so). All they really want are talking points, not a discussion of the issues.
Of course it’s worth noting, yet again, that even if their quotemines were legitimate, the argument from authority (as opposed to the proper use of an authority) still would not be.
And while an authority like Darwin is worthy of use in a discussion (just not as if he were the final word), he is especially bad for discussing the many “found links” between organisms, for the simple fact that many of the missing links have subsequently been found.
Glen D
http://behefails.wordpress.com
Bah nevermind. comprehension failure
To summarize Darin (in “BBB” form):
…fossil record has no transitional forms… blah, blah, blah …Darwinism is a religion based on faith… blah, blah, blah …other guys I don’t know don’t like evolution either… blah, blah, blah.
Hasn’t anyone ever told you that lies are SO unbecoming??
Well now Darin also has PZ Myers, prominent atheist, stating:
“Evolution… is… a complete fabrication. Darwin… merely exposed his own shallow thinking and lack of intellectual integrity.”
Now, after being quoted two or three times it’ll lose the ellipsis and end up in a quote list somewhere.
Wow, PWNED. Good work.
We eagerly await your response, Darin!
PZ,
Whaddya mean by read the source you inaccurately quote? That would require…reading and stuff.
Reading is for elitists, and elitists is bad.
On a related note…
So apparently some scientists are “on the verge of creating new life” in a lab. That’s great and all… but what astounds me is the reader comments on this article:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/biologists-on-t.html?npu=1&mbid=yhp
A good 3/4 of them are by creotards–not only that, but there’s talk of chemtrails and the NWO, with the grammar and sentence structure just barely exceeding YouTube standards. I was absolutely appalled. Is this typical crowd that Wired.com attracts?
And why is it that such douchebags are always so fucking smarmy?
They love to write smug little drolleries like, “Here are some interesting quotes you might enjoy”, or “PZ, I thought you might find this amusing” when they know full well they’re trolling and likely to provoke a flame war. Yet, we’re the ones accused of being elitist and thinking we’re better than everyone else.
Puddles of fucking swill. Thank rationality that we figured out organ transplantation (with little to no help and lots of opposition from the religious, thank-you-very-much) so that such fools might prove of some use to society, someday.
Here’s an interesting thought that you might enjoy, Darin ;-): Take good care of those corneas Darin, and maybe you won’t be a waste of skin your entire life. Just thought you might get a kick out of that.
I believe the Flat Earth concept of history has been debunked. People did not actually believe the earth was flat, with a few notable exceptions. Reading Michael Shermer’s book I was truck by the medieval depiction of earth as belonging in celestial spheres, represented in the round. Skepticality did a good show on it a long time ago[MP3].
Though I haven’t read Garwood’s book. I must admit my suspicions are aroused.
DrFrank: Surely you mean “PZ Myers… exposed his own… [prominence]”? Ooh err.
Ellipses can go backwards in the text, remember – sometimes even multiple chapters!
Apparently, Darin is a trained circus monkey who has mastered the wonders of CTRL-C and CTRL-V.
Why don’t the creotards save themselves all the refutation, anguish and bullshit they get from rational people and science, and just attribute everything to their imaginary god, no questions asked and none answered. “Who made you?” My god. Who made god? My god. Who caused evolution? My god. Who caused your evolutionary descent into insanity? My god. Can you describe your insanity? My god!
PZ Myers, famous evolutionist:
Ouch. If I was ever smacked that hard, it’d sting for weeks. I hope Darin has a thick skin. Oh wait…
PZ – you have given a lot of time to create a refutation that will surely be ignored by the boorish fool who inspired it. In spite of that sad truth, you haven’t wasted your time. Those of us who care to think about the real world benefit from your blistering exposure of those who don’t.
Quotemines aside, that’s one of my favorite bits from Origin: notice that, inter alia, Darwin not only points out the patterns in the fossil record that more than a century later would be named punctuated equilibria, but he also provides early versions of the current explanations for the phenomenon. Best. Scientist. Ever.
Dishonest quote mining: 2nd box in the 3rd row – Creationist Bingo
Dr. Frank – Fucking hilarious!
Direct quotes from PZ Meyers admitting the creationists have won and Darin has defeated him:
“Man, Darin is … on top of that. It’s one of the things that annoys me most about creationists…they’re scoring points … great minds in biology agree with them.
“…Darin is sitting there smugly … he has shot down the case for evolution…”
P.S. SC you beat me to it. Mine’s a bit longer though…
The Chemist in #14: Garwood does in fact deal with that myth about the myth in her prologue, and tosses in a sketch of its history too.
The book happens to be sojourning in our house now, which is why it was on the tip of my figurative tongue; Joe got it from the Mechanics’ Institute Library in SF last week.
You know this Simpson’s episode where Homer is wrongly accused of sexual harassment and tries to explain in a TV show, but they distort and quote-mine what he says, and when they finally broadcast it, you can see the studio clock in the background making big jumps from 8 to 8:30 and back to 7:45 and so on?
I thought, “now that’s an exaggeration”. But there really are people who aren’t ashamed of distorting the truth just like that…
Attention creationists, if you really want to be “scholarly” and look smart, rather than peddle the same discredited tripe, I recommend that you try a new route- Postmodernism.
Seriously, evolutionary biology, astronomy, geology, and the other historic sciences are all subsets of the great and glorious discipline of history. At the same time, postmodern thought has challenged the notion that we can truly know anything about the past.
This is where you come in. Creationists, go forth and read Keith Jenkins, Hayden White, Kellner, and the other great postmodern historians. Then string the relevant sections of text together and boom- near full-proof attacks on Darwinism. Plus citing pomo scholars will give you credibility. Repeat often enough and victory shall be yours.
Wow.
I think one of my geekiest pleasures is disproportionate response – when some does some very weak trolling and get systematically ripped a new one.
Cheers for brightening my day!
The reason, as I see it, that creos quote mine so often is that this is exactly how they have been taught to read and understand the bible.
Find small passages that seem to endorse a presupposition and use that to make your case about what the bible has to say.
So after years and years of doing just that, they think this is what we do in academia.
Real Research, they are just bad at it.
Let’s see Darin wiggle out of that one.
Layin down the smackdown, well done PZed.
Right, of course. Any creationist who made an honest effort to study evolution couldn’t possibly continue being a creationist. I have heard creationists admit they refuse to look at, for example, talkorigins.org, because talkorigins is biased, as if understanding science is a bias.
I think their fear of hell is part of the problem. They believe their invisible friend tortures anyone who dares educate himself. Also, they’re not interested in studying anything that threatens their childish fantasy world, and they’re just too brainwashed to comprehend they are part of nature. They think the idea their ancestors were ape-like creatures is insulting. The creationists believe people are special magical creations of Mr. God. They can’t imagine anything more repulsive than being related to chimps. Their stupidity is breathtaking, and there’s millions of them. Does this mean most of the American population is brain-dead? Unfortunately yes. America is not a country. It’s an insane asylum.
I think there is a secret contest among creationists for the coveted title of “Poster Child for Creationist Stupidity.” Last I checked, the contemptible VenomFangX was in the lead.
@ #27:
Ah yes, I remember doing that in college for papers in classes that I hated. It doesn’t sting too bad getting a C if you were sleeping through it anyway.
OMGZ TUMAROW TEH LHC WUL BLEWD UP TEH WERLD!
Wait, am I on the right blog?
PZ, how on earth do you find the time to deal with these morons? This and your Dazzling the innumerate thread are incredible exercises in pearl before swine. Wish I had your patience…instead I always end up just telling them to go fuck themselves. You have the patience of Job*
*yeah yeah I know, it was deliberate.
It’s not like you can blame them. Fundamentalists live their entire lives cherry-picking passages from their own book to justify all sorts of random things, so it’s only natural for them to immediately jump to using the same tactic on other works without thinking anything of it.
Well, as we all know, the bible itself says “there is no God”, as anyone can read.
So obviously, atheism must be true, and all those believing worshipers are just being silly.
Darin’s post would fail the APA portion of the test alone. The creobots are multidimensionaly wrong, and so much so, it’s really quite maddening that they have any power whatsoever, and that people believe their hand-wringing denials of evidence. They are wrong in their criticisms, they are wrong in the defense of the positions, they misquote with abandon, they can’t even stay straight on the name of ONE person they prop up against evolution, somebody nobody’s ever heard of, but whis attributed to be the exact projection of everything they hate.
religion + organized hierarchical arrogance = devolution of society
Christian quote mining has a very long history. Much of Christianity itself based on quote mining the Hebrew Bible for “evidence” of “prophecies” of the coming of Jesus (insert off-colour comment here). Many of you are probably familiar with the whole mistranslation of the Hebrew “almah” (spelling?), meaning “young women” to the Greek “parthanos” meaning “virgin”, giving rise to the whole doctrine of the virgin birth. I recently read a book called How Jesus Became Christian which tells the story of how a nice Jewish boy’s ideas got subverted and/or disregarded by Paul to found a new religion which he would probably not have recognized or approved of. It is the story of how the religion of a fully human, fully Jewish Jesus became the religion about the divine, gentile Christ. Watch any of the “end-time” sermons of the televangelist to see how far away from “literal” translation they are capable of straying. It’s sadly amusing how they can find all sorts of biblical “evidence” to support their lurid scenarios in highly imaginative and less than simply literal interpretations of “prophecy” to show how America and the rest of the world will, er, um, “interact” in what they believe and hope to be the imminent End of the World. And yet Genesis is to be used as a science textbook (tell me, though, where are the wombats?). Go Figure. If they have so little respect for the careful, scholarly use of their own texts, how can we expect them to show care or respect for any other written source?
#27
Nah, Steve Fuller has tried that route without success.
#39 nails it. Ditto for the Quran. They’re still trying to decide whether it’s 72 virgins, or 72 raisins. How hard do you think the imams will fight to keep it the former?
It galls me that religious apologists know these musty tomes are still being translated and even discovered, but turn their brains off when the obvious question comes to mind…
The actual Watson quote is:
Evolution itself is accepted by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or is supported by logically coherent arguments, but because it does fit all the facts of taxonomy, of palæontology, and geographical distribution, and because no alternative explanation is credible.
The first instance of the quote-mine that I’m aware of is by C.S. Lewis (source: The Quotable Lewis)
Isn’t taking Palin’s quote about “teaching both sides” of the evolution debate, without quoting the full context (i.e., her clarification) a form of “quote mining”?
@ #35 — PZ does not sleep. sleep is for the weak.
I think that’s known as being “smacked back to the Stone Age”, which is, of course, where Darin’s beliefs were born and haven’t evolved a smidgeon since.
People like Darin puzzle me. They insist that there isn’t any evidence for evolution and/or global warming but that the world will end tomorrow because of the LHC and that vaccines cause autism is an absolute fact and they have the evidence to prove it. Again, fractal wrongness rears its ugly head.
At least he didn’t use the eye quote.
On the quote by More/Moore:
The quote is from Louis Trenchard More, The Dogma of Evolution , Princeton University Press, 1925, p. 160. It is in my personal collection of anti-evolution books. The exact text reads,
The more one studies palaeontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which it is necessary to have when on encounters the great mysteries of religion.
The title page reveals More to be a “Professor of Physics, University of Cincinnati” and states that the book is based on “lectures delivered at Princeton University, January 1925”.
There is a picture of More here: http://www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/archives/collections/ltmore.html
As far as I know, More had no biological training, and his book is filled with misunderstandings and embarrassingly naive pronouncements such as this one:
We can then be certain that geology cannot, and never will be able to, translate the thickness of any one stratum into an equivalent length of time and that i cannot, and never will be able to, establish real contemporaneousness of time in different parts of the world. (italics in original, p. 151)
Ironically enough, More’s own field, physics, would be the key to establishing chronology through radiometric dating.
I think we can dispose of More’s quote as coming from a unqualified observer.
Greg N. #43,
what’s Palin’s clarification on this ?
Any link ?
How dare you talk like that of David Meredith Something Watson! He did some important work in vertebrate paleontology all the way to the 1950s — especially in… wait for it… phylogeny. The one area that altogether doesn’t exist for creationists.
LOL!
Not quite. What he was mostly talking about were mass extinction events. He thought long intervals of time were missing from the record between any two successive periods; in fact they aren’t (as we can now tell by radiometric dating). Punk eek is a microscopic phenomenon compared to that.
We have a winner.
Well, sure. Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
What is her clarification?
Ahh, young Darin has just learned to use teh google, and he is already using his l33t skillz to attack teh most evilest athiest on teh t00bz.
Darin, please, you are simply rehashing the same old refuted YEC yuckiness, and expecting seasoned seekers of knowledge to quail like junior high school students. Next time, do your homework.
Lemme Try This.
Psalm 14:1
There is no God.
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds,
there is none who does good.
Woot! I Did It! The Bible Says There Is No God! Quote Mining Works!
It really shouldn’t be surprising that they’re anti-intellectual. After all, they understand the world and their place in it by having opinions about it, and then searching for anything that supports said opinions. All else is discarded.
Heck, they quote mine the Bible and call it “wisdom”.
@#35: PZ isn’t casting pearls before swine, he’s casting diamonds before swine. Let’s hope that at least the oinker will cut his nose on one of the culets (the sharp points at the base of faceted stones).
Quoteminers annoy the hell out of me, it’s an appeal to authority and nothing more. It’s quite tragic that there are so many sites dedicated to spreading that misinformation. Especially as those sites are usually fundamentalist Christian sites where a literal interpretation of Genesis is more important than the 9th commandment.
The fundamental dishonesty that seeps through the creationist movement seems counter to everything their religion stands for. If Jesus were alive today, I’m sure he’d be distancing himself from his followers; and his followers would cast him out saying he is a false prophet.
That’s exactly what these people do with their religious texts, too: They snip out and combine isolated sentences to support whatever idea they want to convey. Because of that m.o., when I was a kid being forced to go to church, I thought the Bible was just a collection of disconnected sayings.
Julian Huxley would never have written “the reason is because”. When I was in school in England over 60 years ago, I was taught that “the reason is because” was as grammatically incorrect as the splitting of an infinitive or the ending of a sentence with a preposition.
Yet when an atheist does this, they are “taking it out of context”. No matter the way the phrase is used, no matter if there is no other rational way of interpreting the phrase by reading the contextual phrases surrounding it, it’s always out of context if you haven’t rationalised it the way they have.
Basically, there’s no way of ever winning with a fundie. Their interpretation of the bible is right; just as their interpretation of evolution is right. The fact that they rationalise a fairy tale and dismiss solid science which they have no idea how it works is evidence enough there is something wrong with their thinking. It frustrates me so much when I have to explain the basics of evolutionary theory to people who are so sure it’s wrong.
@Greg said in #43 above:
No, actually. In an interview, Palin clearly stated that she advocates a ‘teach the controversy’ position straight from the DI play book. It was only *after* she received a great deal of criticism for her pro-creationism-in-schools statement that she “clarified” – in a completely separate interview, mind you – saying that she would not push the Alaska Board of Education to add “alternatives to evolution” to the curriculum, and further said she wouldn’t use evolution/creation views as a litmus test for school board appointments.
It isn’t quote-mining to cite a clearly stated position, even if the person quoted later slightly modified that position (purely out of political expediency). Knowing which way the political wind is blowing while running for office is hardly the same as demonstrating any respect for (or understanding of) science and the First Amendment.
Notice, also, that Palin never withdrew her support from teaching creationism in public schools: She simply hemmed and hawed and hedged her bets, saying that she didn’t think “alternatives to evolution” HAD to be a part of the curriculum – but also saying that she thinks they *should* be, which is quite enough on its own to make quoting her pro-creationist comments perfectly legitimate. Even with full context and the best plausible interpretation of what she actually said over the course of those two interviews, there is every reason to think that she supports and endorses teaching creationist “controversies” in the public schools, but that she’s politically astute enough not to commit political suicide by insisting that schools do so while running for office in a very independent-minded, libertarian-leaning state.
You know, when I see a comment like
I generally expect to see some discussion of the evidence, particularly beyond the surface level, to show how it fails.
Random quotes are not evidence, out of context or not. Stephen J. Gould could have a quote denying evolution and it would not make it any less true.
I think her 4-5 children are a stronger argument for procreationist sentiments.
I don’t know why there were derogatory comments about the Flat Earth Society. There are some very interesting articles in their forum section (at least they make more sense than the ones on the Discovery Institute’s one). Personally, I have a sneaking suspicion that they are actually secret round earth sceptics, and are just trying to undermine the true belief that the earth is indeed flat. They did actually mention Christine Garwood’s book favourably on their website. Do you need more proof?
Sarah Palin isn’t a creationist, she’s a post modernist. We can’t determine reality outside what we think it is, and so the only fair thing to do is to teach everything as being valid.
Or some crap like that.
I support teaching evolution for two reasons …
1.The universe and everything in it is imperfect.
2. Things change.
Creationism requires an unchanging universe, something we don’t have. Even if evidence was found showing that a long time ago a pink sky fairy did create everything, it would still not support creationism as the creationists understand it, because the universe would still change.
The theory of evolution doesn’t explain things perfectly, but at least it explains things.
It seems as though Darwin may have been hinting at something like punctuated equilibrium here.
It seems to me most people are missing mr. reislers’ point. He is simply trying to point out that certain scientific requirements are necessary for a scientific theory to be considered a scientific law. He is not saying that these scientists did not believe in their own theories. as any scientist knows, proving a scientific theory to be scientific law is a rigorous endeavor indead. both sides of this argument require an amount of “strong assurance”. for me science is fun, why is everyone sounding angry??
Wow,
I must say I am somewhat flattered. I would never have imagined that a scientist such as yourself (and those people who commented) would have such an EMOTIONAL response to my post. I will point out that I did not use any profanity in my post, and I did not call anybody by derogatory names or use any adjectives that were inflammatory. I did not insult anybody but merely tried to add to your conversation. I will point out that I was on your site to begin with… hmmm… perhaps I was looking at the other side of the argument? My faith is not a “blind” one and there is a great deal of historical evidence for it. (I started off as an evolutionist, by the way… and was swayed away from evolution as I studied it further.)
You know, I’m writing this as I’m getting off of work… and I’m wondering… do I need to be careful as I go out to my car? I received a whole article and 63 comments within a matter of hours. If there are ever times when I feel like nobody cares about what I have to say… I will just go to your website and smile. :-) Thank you for making me feel so important! (I’m blushing now.)
You know, after reading your response and the subsequent posts, I decided to look up a couple of definitions. If you believe I am “quote-mining” in these definitions… so be it.
“Religion- 4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.” (thefreedictionary.com).
“Faith- 1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.” (thefreedictionary.com)
As evidenced by the article and the 63 comments, it is obvious to me that you all hold a firm faith in your religion of evolution.
So I guess I will end with this… and I do say end… because I have much more productive things to do than to keep going back-and-forth with people who use profanity, derogatory remarks, and name-calling as a part of their tactics for debate.
Here is a quote you can use from me, “I tried to have a meaningful conversation with an evolutionist and wound up getting involved with a bunch of religious zealots instead.”
-Darin
r bucket: People are angry because the use of the quotes was dishonest and stupid.
“He is not saying that these scientists did not believe in their own theories.”
Actually that’s exactly what he was saying.
Yes Darin, you refrained from swearing, very good.
Now you just need to work on the LYING.
Which according to your faith is a sin, remember?
1. Quotemine and misrepresent a theory you don’t understand
2. Take the moral highground after your argument is ripped apart.
3. Call science a faith, and call anyone who uses it as members of a religion.
4. ???
3. Profit
It’s no surprise to see continued intellectual dishonesty from a quote-miner, it fit’s a pattern of behaviour.
Vapid troll. Nothing to see here, move on.
That should be
5. Profit
Damn typo.
Lying usually has that effect on people who care about the truth.
Man, PZ, I don’t know how you do it. The Liars for Jesus keep coming in pretending to be on a quest for truth when it is so blatantly obvious that their only interest is in spreading their religion virus.
It’s the same tired crap over and over.
Thanks for taking the time to battle it…thanks for being the vaccine.
#73
Agreed. it’s like the world’s most depressing version of whack-a-mole.
That’s your reply? That your critics were emotional and some of them used profanity?
Are you insane?
You spat out a collection of lies and mangled quotes. You did not make an argument — you just echoed lies. You cited sources you’ve never read, and didn’t understand. You have to address the fact that you pretended to knowledge you do not have to make false claims, and your excuse for avoiding taking responsibility for your own words is that people were understandable peeved that you lied?
You confirm once again my impression of creationists and christians.
I read mr. reislers’ comment and still don’t see where he is saying these scientists don’t believe in their own theory. “quote mining”, “Out of context”, not reading the paragraph before and after that text….I understand what everyone is saying, but i don’t think that was his point. I read mr. reislers’ comment as merely saying –para-phrase–…”Absolutes are hard to come by, and both sides take an element of faith to believe in them absolutely.”
Darin, these people are emotional because you’re a lying scumbag intending to cause harm to humanity. Anyone who doesn’t get emotional when faced with the lies of a disingenuous turd like you hasn’t been paying attention.
He’s somewhat flattered to be exposed as a liar. He professes to be blushing because people care about his lies. Yecch.
What some people won’t do for their 15 minutes.
Welcome to the world of fuzzy logic. If that guy came in here and spouted that the sun orbitted the earth, then there would be a heated reaction as well. While we can’t be absolutely certain evolution happened, it’s as strong a theory as we can get in science. Like Heliocentrism, it would be a 0.9 where 0.9 is as certain as we can get taking into account the non-absolute nature of empiricism.
They are defended vigorously because they are as close as we can get to truth with empiricism. The difference between science and religion is that science is built on evidence from the ground up, while religion is a top-down endeavour. In the end, it doesn’t matter what any of us think, only what the evidence says. To quote evolutionary biologists to make inferrences about evolutionary theory is being misrepresentative of the theory and thus he is lying. He’s bearing false witness, breaking the 9th commandment…
In a way Darin does confirm the existence of the paranormal, in that it’s proving impossible to rationally interpret his actions.
Dr. Myers,
Please do not be so incensed. It is not worth it.
Admittedly, as a geologist I do not look upon the biological world in the same way, I see it as a transient and ephemeral phenomenon that adds a specific dimension to geology as a general science, namely paleotology and it’s antecedants.
I understand why you are incensed by the ludicrous claims of an ignorant and arrogant con man selling his wares, but have a little charity. I mean, when things play out, as they will no doubt, he will find himself in a nasty corner. That is the peculiarly awkward thing about the difference between empicical viewpoints and fantastic viewpoints.
I think though one thing should be made clear. Those who offer up these so called alternative points of view should be labeled appropriately and clearly, there should be no doubt as to their status. They are liars plain and simple. I do not broke any sympathy for the illusion that they are sincere believers, even if they were, they believe in a lie.
The greatest result of science is true humility, in light of the universe we have discovered by it’s method.
No fantasy religion can even approach the humility that science affords to those who pursue it.
I cry for my country, because they cannot dream the heights we might reach.
I thought SCIENCE was objective. all who are name calling and vulger confuse me. i think the approach is “i theorize this because…”, “what you said doesn’t make sense because…”, “my hypothesis is this..” If Darwinistic evolution was proved “beyond a shadow of a doubt”, a lot of grants would be lost to other theories and hypothesis.
Criticizing the fundie religidiots for ‘quote-mining’ probably will not mean much to them. It is their standard way of thinking, called bible exegesis. Picking out random snippets of text to support a predetermined point of view is the only way they can make any sense of that steaming pile of gibberish the call the “Holy Bible”. So it is their natural way to approach any other text they can’t ubnderstand, because they don’t have the education to realize technical scientific works actually contain verifiable (or falsifiable) facts and theories.
r bucket wrote (if you can call it that):
By the sound of things complex concepts like ‘first pants, then shoes’ would probably confuse you. Science is objective. Scientists are people, and they aren’t required to be objective when dealing with disingenuous turds – or the morons who arrive to support them in a barely-literate fashion.
SCIENCE is objective because the process weeds out the SUBJECTIVE nature of the individuals in it. It matters not what individuals say, it’s whether the evidence can survive scrutiny.
As for name calling, people here are, well, people. SCIENCE has nothing to do with it at all.
Gravity is proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, yet we still do research into it. Evolution is a THEORY, it’s explains the FACTS of the universe. We don’t know every FACT there is to know, so we still do research on it. Evolution, the theory fits with all the facts that we’ve observed, hence why it’s said to be proven beyond reasonable doubt. Not knowing the exact process that caused feathers to develop or horns to grow on a particular species doesn’t make the theory any less true.
Evolution is beyond a reasonable doubt because it’s been observed, it fits the observations of many different lines of evidence, and there’s nothing observed that would count against it (i.e. no rabbits in Cambrian rock). It’s always suseptible to new evidence, and that is the difference between science and religion. Theories change as observable data changes.
The more the retard studied evolution, the more he doubted it. Apparently morons think evidence for something makes it less likely. And if the evidence is overwhelming, the idea should be thrown out.
Darin Reisler, which Bible website did you use to study evolution? Also, where did you cut and paste your quote mining from?
Science is not a religion, Mr. Shit For Brains.
Here is a quote you can use from me, “I tried to have a meaningful conversation with an evolutionist and wound up getting involved with a bunch of religious zealots instead.”
You came in here pretending like you knew what you were talking about, but you didn’t know what you were talking about. You got everything wrong. That’s because you copied it from somewhere and you didn’t bother checking to see if the people you copied it from knew what they were talking about too.
(I started off as an evolutionist, by the way… and was swayed away from evolution as I studied it further.)
Are those quotes you posted the study you were talking about?
“Religion- 4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.” (thefreedictionary.com).
Is that the only dictionary with this definition, or are there other dictionaries that have that one too? answers.com says agnosticism, atheism, and disbelief are antonyms of religion, but it doesn’t say that evolution is an antonym of religion, so that means it’s a religion and therefore if you don’t believe in evolution then that makes you an atheist.
Since when is dishonest quote mining a meaningful conversation?
Darin Reisler, you’re a liar and an asshole (which makes you a typical Christian).
Good point on gravity…it is a law and is still studied. It is not studied however to prove it as law, but to make use of it’s properties (in most cases). so that was my point.
…by the way, my pants are really baggy and i put my shoes on first to keep my feet from getting cold :)–baggy pants fit over shoes you see..oops forgot my underwear.!Start over..
“The reason, as I see it, that creos quote mine so often is that this is exactly how they have been taught to read and understand the bible.”
If only scholarly writing had chapter and verse numbers.
@r bucket #82
I read mr. reislers’ comment and still don’t see where he is saying these scientists don’t believe in their own theory.
Obviously since he said they were evolutionists then he would think that they believe their own theory. Everybody is upset because he said they don’t look at evidence beyond the surface level, when in fact Mr. Reisler is the one who didn’t look at the evidence long enough to see if he barely knew what he was talking about. He was blindly copying and pasting from ignorant creationist people.
Remember that law isn’t a step up from theory, law is a mathematical representation of a statement of fact. There is still a theory of gravity, it has changed over the years, and there is still much to learn about it.
Evolution is much the same. There is still a lot to learn, we don’t know everything about it. Yet there is one thing we know about evolution that we don’t know about gravity: the mechanism under which it operates. We have never observed the proposed graviton, yet we have observed countless times the exact mechanisms under which evolution works. We know about mutations in DNA that give rise to variation in a population, we know about natural selection that weeds out unfavourable traits. We know about genetic drift as a means of transmission of these mutations. We know about speciation. All this fits in with taxonomy, with the fossil record, with genetics, with common ancestry.
Which is what we do with evolution these days. We have a solid theory, we have mechanisms under which to operate, we can make useful predictions and get a finer knowledge of just how it happened. To clarify that, we know the process, we are looking at the very end of a chain. By applying what we know of the process, we can work out some of the links in the chain.
To be ambivilant about evolution in the science lab would be like being ambivalent about gravity. Imagine if someone said before the LHC is on “This assumes gravity is true, so any results from this are bogus”, which is pretty much what creationists do with evolution. It ignores the difference between fact and theory, it tries to cast doubt on a solid theory, and it makes the fallacious assumption that the evidence is invalid. I wrote a couple of blog entries on this topic; exploring why taking out evolution won’t destroy the evidence or make creationism any more plausible.
http://kelosophy.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-if-evolution-didnt-happen.html
http://kelosophy.blogspot.com/2008/08/is-evolution-circular.html
Kel:
I was on a dig with my brother-in-law and discovered many abnormalities in the various statum. dinosaur bones-large but not yet identified-far below what would be qualified as the even the “upper triasic” time period geologically. no signs of a stratum flip due to plate-tectonics..i don’t know more questions than answers geologically for me.
So what did that tell us about the science? i.e. do you have any information on it other than a personal anecdote?
Kel:
i have observed genetic drift within a species..great for an ever changing “non-static” world, but have not observed it crossing species lines. bacteria do crazy things, viruses that can modify..yet when i studied just the human eye in gross anatomy
AND trust me, the cadaver was gross..two years overdue for a new one) anyway i digress..
The human eye defies the laws of entropy in my mind. it is truely a wonderous thing. i can’t get from the cambrian period to a human eye through mutation and genetic drift…opening for name calling..I know..!
May I be the first to complement you on your excellent salad.
I guess everyone needs a hobby.
You arrogant fool, Darin! You think PZ’s post was EMOTIONAL? What an idiot you are.
Are you this dishonest in your everday life? I suspect so – and suspect you don’t even realize it.
Have a nice day.
[rolls eyes]
Care to elaborate on the meaning of the “laws of entropy”?
That says nothing about the observations of speciation.
Argument from incredulity. I agree it’s a wonderous thing, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have evolved. There are plenty of scientists out there now who have a detailed explanation for the eye, why are you so sure it can’t happen and what alternate do you propose?
Are you prone to tripping over your own tongue? Then, yes.
Kel:
Kel:
sorry my post are out of order..you know. one thought at a time.
Yah, just a personal anecdote on the complexity of this world and universe and beyond..to be honest (room for name calling) i consider myself a man of Faith and Science (not an expert in either) many shortcomings you see..intellectually and spiritually.
to answer your question…It says about science that it is not perfect and is constantly adapting to new discoveries and I think that is where faith comes in (to endeavor towards the truth..) no matter which side you’re on. i’m hypothesizing mr. reisler was trying to say that.
No, Mr. Reisler was saying no such thing. His arguments were ripped to shreds and he was exposed as a dishonest, arrogant ass, so he countered by accusing everyone not named “Darin” of being a dogmatic fundamentalist.
We see that at least five times a week here.
It’s predictable, shallow and dull (like Mr. Reisler himself) but it’s important not to let such behavior slide without comment.
Note:
Entropy is the second law of thermodynamics. it is unusable energy or (sorry for my crapy non-textbook version)the movement of everything in the universe to a more disorganized state. Thermodynamics is energy.. and for every change we observe, energy is needed..hope i didn’t fumble that up too much..i should be in bed digesting dinner to create energy for tommorow..making that corn-dog less organized you know :)
While I agree that science is not perfect, I strongly disagree with your use of faith. Faith is believing in something without evidence, yet there is very good evidence as to why we believe what we do in science. The fundamental difference between science and religion in regard to this is that we are willing to change our ideas of what is true when the evidence contradicts it. Religion doesn’t have that flexibility.
Given Mr. Reisler was willing to go to the point of misrepresenting the positions of scientists and use it to go against the scientific grain, I must strenuously disagree with your hypothesis. If he were grounded in evidence and was calling for some humility in the face of knowledge, that would attest to your hypothesis. Unfortunately for your idea, the facts speak for themselves. Mr Reisler was nothing more than a liar trying to use science against itself without even understanding the basics of what he was arguing against.
Please calculate the volume in phase space associated with the macrostate of being a human eye.
to answer your question…It says about science that it is not perfect and is constantly adapting to new discoveries and I think that is where faith comes in (to endeavor towards the truth..) no matter which side you’re on. i’m hypothesizing mr. reisler was trying to say that.
Well, he said that “evolutionist” scientists don’t look beyond the surface of the evidence and that the evidence for his faith is stronger than the evidence for evolution. If that’s how you want to interpret it then okay I can respect that.
Not!
r bucket @ 93:
Where was this dig? What formation was it in? Are you sure they were dinosaur bones? (There were other large saurians about in the Permian and Triassic). What was the overall geologic setting of area? (Sometimes strata can appear to be flat-lying and relatively undisturbed in a particular location, but as you trace out the beds, you find faults or folds that explain the displacement.)
I’m not trying to be rude–just curious.
Entropy is an important concept related to the second law of thermodynamics, not “is” the second law of thermodynamics [/anal]
Your last sentence I agree with, modulo contextually irrelevant quibbles. So what’s the problem with evolving an eye? This line of argument leads to the conclusion that evolving an eye requires an external source of energy. No problem… we have one of those.
well, my wife just told me to get to bed “and i think i’ll listen to her”. it was fun talking to you kel, and i hope you have a good week..sorry if i left it short as i don’t know what will post after i’m done fumbling through this keyboard..and i do love digging for fossils, so i am sure my brother-in-law and i will have many great adventures in that area.
note..I read your comment on faith and by definition yes.. but for me it is evidence and happenings supporting my faith that strengthen it..anyway everybody have fun and be nicer for goodness sake..
r bucket
In regards to entropy–it only applies to closed systems (those in which no matter or energy is added). Organisms (and populations of organisms) are open systems, which can take up matter (in the form of food/nutrients) and energy (think photosynthesis, or a lizard basking in the sun) from their surroundings. Entropy does not apply.
I’m too tired to be a nice person right now, but I’m too restless to sleep.
What a remarkable collection of mixed-up, partially correct statements — half-digested truths gnawed off of half-baked, oversimplified treatments of the science. Such statements are indicative of one who has swallowed the jargon of a science but not learned to reason about it. Entropy is not “the second law of thermodynamics”; rather, one way of stating the second law is in terms of a quantity known as entropy. Entropy is not “unusable energy” (the units of entropy are in fact energy divided by temperature, joules per kelvin in the standard system). The (Helmholtz) free energy is given by the total energy of a system minus the product of entropy and temperature, not entropy alone.
Finally, the statement “Thermodynamics is energy” is hopelessly vague. It would be better to say that thermodynamics is the study of the effects of and interconversions among certain types of energy.
You don’t really know thermodynamics, do you?
ok, so i’m disobeying my wife a little…
honey in the water(your words) will get far.
vinegar…not so much. ok i’m serious this time.
good night
no wonder they say blogs are addicting. anyway..i see thermodynamics working every moment of every day. it controls our existance in every way..so in that, yes i do limitedly understand thermodynamics.
the lizard still cools and can’t recover the energy that created his warmth.
The sun that created that energy is losing energy.
unless the universe has an unknown input…it is a closed system.
and this time super serious with no take backs it’s bed time..
**note**I know i’m not an expert on anything really, just a curious mind.
All snideness aside, you might want to read up a little more. Can I suggest this? :
http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Thermodynamics-H-C-Van-Ness/dp/0486632776
It’s only short, and will be worth your while.
If you take it that way, it’s a closed system. I agree. But it’s a closed system with a huge amount of energy to exert.
Just consider it this way.
We as individuals are made up of body parts, those body parts are made up of smaller parts. Those smaller parts are made up of even smaller parts.
Likwise we are a tiny part of the closed system* that is the universe. In effect to maintain us, we need an external source, which we do have. Both the sun and the earth provide us with energy. The fact that the universe is closed becomes irrelevant as we are in an open system relatively speaking. There is no reason at all to that the closed nature* of the universe on our level, it makes no sense whatsoever scientifically.
*assuming the universe is closed
You experience the effects of gravity every day, but would you feel confident in using your “what goes up must come down” understanding to navigate a space probe to planet Mars?
Kel asked bucket: There are plenty of scientists out there now who have a detailed explanation for the eye, why are you so sure it can’t happen and what alternate do you propose?
I don’t think bucket bothered to answer this question. Most likely this is where he would invoke his magic sky fairy.
The truth doesn’t matter to these people, they will lie, distort, bully, spin and twist in order to justify their beliefs. They seem to be incapable of shame, at intellectually deceiving themselves and others around them. They will do all this with a clear conscience, they are convinced they are doing “good” work.
I no longer believe these attacks come from ignorance, I think they have poorly developed personalities and pathological thought processes bordering on psychosis.
That is just incredibly eloquent.
Darin Reisler 66,
Well then if you can call “religion” any activty that’s pursued with conscientious devotion, that means a lot of things :
– working for exams
– raising children
– starting up a business
– all of Science of course
-…
Why didn’t you refer instead to the other 3 definitions in thefreedictionary.com :
“1.
a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader”
Quote-mining again ?
That’s the general definition of faith when used for anything, not the word “faith” when used in religious terms.
For example :
I have faith in my wife
I have faith in my teacher
I have faith in this politician
etc…
But when used for religion, “faith” means (see thefreedictionary.com, strange that you chose not to refer to this)
“2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
4. (often) Faith (Christianity) The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God’s will.
5. The body of dogma of a religion”
Quote-mining again !
If that makes you happy to pick in a dictionary the definition which doesn’t apply when writing a particular phrase, I wonder if you know how to use a dictionary.
Hey, why not say then:
“I have faith in my children’s religion of working for their exams.”
Using inappropriate definition of terms and quote-mining, why am I not surprised ?
Darin Reisler,
anyway forget it, please do stick to your ideas about evolution, your understanding of authors and quote-mining them, your way of using a dictionary, and your “faith” in your own education and knowledge.
You seem quite confident that it’s far superior to anybody else’s here !
I sincerely doubt that you have any other options.
Using inappropriate definition of terms and quote-mining, why am I not surprised ?
I don’t know why you’re not “2. To attack or capture suddenly and without warning.” I don’t know.
386sx
Darin Reisler’s possible understanding of the sentence :
“Using inappropriate definition of terms” =
“Using inappropriate clarity of details of the end of gestation periods”
Hey let’s go for anything…we shouldn’t be “elitists” !
No, she’s not even an honest post-modernist. Quite apart from her believing in her own (current) religion and rejecting atheism and other religions, it’s a fair bet she believes that the legal system can identify and jail real criminals rather than innocent or random people and that the “terrorists” being tortured are all real terrorists and that none of the torturers or their handlers are. There will be lots of examples of that type (of her taking a definite stand on what constitutes “reality”) which demonstrate that any apparent post-modernist pretensions on her part are very selective and expedient rather than genuine, ie they are merely one of her ways of lying.
Creationists quote-mine because they were bought up defending doctrines with “prrof texts”. They think that proof-texting (which is simply quote-mining the bible) *is* scholarship, and honestly don’t know any better.
When I was a fundie, I had occasion to read an actual scientific monograph about leaf parasites on eucalypt trees. It was a revelation – not on parasites, so much, but on how science is done and what it is.
The Darin Reisler method on how to use thefreedictionary.com
definition :
4. sharpness of outline
term :
4. the period of pregnancy when childbirth is imminent
“definition of terms” =
sharpness of outline of the periods of pregnancy
Let’s continue :
sharpness = intelligence
outline
b. A statement summarizing the important points of a text.
Conclusion, according to thefreedictionary.com :
r bucket #103
Perhaps this poster, (of my all time favourite post,) will help your understanding of thermodynamics.
“Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn’t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.”
There’s not much gets past us Scientists eh!
Full post at:
http://smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=1073734&postcount=232
Quotes taken out of context, it’s always a winner when you don’t have real arguments!
“Man, Darin is a contemptible liar”
Of course he is. Being a faithful person means to live a lie. So that’s what they HAVE to be and to do, every day, every minute, mostly to themselves: lie.
I guess because the religious spend their lives lying to themselves it’s probably not that big a deal for them to lie to others.
cactusren #110
What do you mean it doesn’t apply to the understanding of how living systems operate ?
Negentropy-eater is shocked !
A living system exports entropy in order to maintain it’s own entropy low, or another way of saying it, it imports negentropy and stores it.
It “feeds” on negentropy. (thanks Schrödinger)
That’s why Lovelock answered that in order to detect life on other planets :
“I’d look for an entropy reduction, since this must be a general characteristic of life.”
Nowadays, one prefers to refer more precisely to the information content of the Gibbs Free Energy, rather than the more general term entropy.
As John Avery explains (Information Theory and Evolution):
PZ wrote:
Be fair, PZ; Reisler didn’t even go into specifics about his faith. By all means, fire away with both barrels at his creationism and probable anti-science fundamentalism, but please don’t tar all Christians with the creationist brush.
Paul Murray #125 – that’s a really good point. The similarity between this kind of quote mining and trawling through the entire Bible for a few tenuously anti-abortion quotes is striking now you’ve pointed it out.
Another wackaloon aspect this is that quote mining is utterly irrelevant anyway. If Darwin had recanted on his deathbed, or PZ were found to have written in a drunken blog post that giant squid were too beautiful to be products of natural selection, or Richard Dawkins and Bob May were both to join the Hare Krishna movement tomorrow, it wouldn’t change the fossils or genome sequences or radiocarbon isotope levels in the slightest. Quotes aren’t evidence.
If the position of Darin and other creationists is correct (which it isn’t) and evolution is just a faith based belief, doesn’t that make it as good as their beliefs?
I’m unsure how; “evolution is based on faith” = “creationism, which is also based on faith, is correct.”
Of course before I get quote mined, evolution is obviously based on a wealth of independently observable evidence, while creationism has none, but it seems like if you’re trying to convince people that you’re right, coming up with a (false) argument that the opposing view is as equally valid as your own isn’t very convincing.
James F,
yet Reisler wrote :
#66
“My faith is not a “blind” one and there is a great deal of historical evidence for it. (I started off as an evolutionist, by the way… and was swayed away from evolution as I studied it further.)”
#102 previous thread
“I’ll keep my faith versus this one. The evidence is stronger.”
So he’s an anti-evolutionist and a faithhead. It’s correct that he might not be a Christian, could be a Muslim for example. But he’s defintely a creationist, whatelse could he be ?
James F,
sorry my comment doesn’t make sense in reply to yours. I misread you.
No worries, negentropyeater, we’re on the same page.
BTW aren’t all Christians creationists, not YECs, but creationists in the sense that they believe God created the Universe and life on earth ?
negentropyeater,
Theodosius Dobzhansky would have agreed with you; in a broad sense, all theists and arguably deists are creationists. Evangelicals who are theistic evolutionists even call themselves evolutionary creationists. However, I prefer to reserve the term for the special creationists – YECs, OECs, and cdesign proponentsists – who are anti-evolution.
That’s what creationists don’t get, because to them only quotes are evidence!
The universe or multiverse, and the human soul, but not necessarily life on earth, no.
That said, where PZ lives, most Christians believe at best in theistic evolution, so I understand why he so often tars all Christians with this broad brush.
special creationist, anti-evolutionist, …
“Creodiot” has a nicer ring to it.
Why do you think they are dinosaur bones? Not every large bone comes from a dinosaur. There were quite large dicynodonts and pareisaurs in the Permian, for example…
Why do you think your stratum is far below the Upper Triassic? Even if you actually have Upper Triassic layers in the same outcrop and above your layer, that doesn’t necessarily mean what it seems to mean. Folding can turn layers over by 180°, and large-scale folding can be difficult to detect. Tell me your e-mail address, and I’ll send you three papers on how two large teams of geologists fought for several years over whether a certain fossil-bearing layer in northeastern China is below or above a volcanic ash bed.
Where did you dig? How far away is the nearest mountain range?
And lastly, why don’t you try to publish? If you really do have a dinosaur that’s older than Late Triassic, you can get into Nature. Only the most sensational breakthroughs are accepted for publication by Nature.
(bold emphasis added)
See? You know full well you’re quote-mining. And then you try hard not to notice that you are quote-mining — so that you can keep your unsupported belief that the theory of evolution is a religion. How cowardish of you.
You have everything backwards here. Theories do not become laws, they explain laws. A law is just a single generalization across lots of observations that can be expressed in a short statement (preferably as a mathematical formula). Explaining why a law holds is the job of a theory.
That’s why we still talk about “the theory of gravity”, “the theory of evolution”, “the theory of relativity”, “the theory of quantum electrodynamics”. The predictions of that latter theory agree with the observations to an insanely large number of digits behind the comma, and yet it stays a theory, because it explains the observations instead of just summarizing them.
Now we finally, finally get to arguments, as opposed to quotes!
However, it doesn’t help you any. Let’s see.
You talk about “species lines” as if such a thing existed. But species are extremely fuzzy affairs. There are at least 25 different definitions of “species” out there, and they regularly designate different entities. You won’t find many species that have the same extent under all 25 definitions.
And depending on the definition, speciation has been observed several times, even though it normally takes longer than a human lifetime. Check out talkorigins.org for an incomplete list.
Regarding entropy, there is no “in my mind”. Either the vertebrate eye* defies the 2nd law of thermodynamics, or it does not. It does not, because the sun shines. Sure, the universe is a closed system, and its total entropy does increase, because nuclear fusion creates more entropy than life destroys. Or on a smaller scale: burning food (metabolism) creates more entropy than building up one’s body (also metabolism) destroys.
Which brings us to the next point: if evolution were impossible because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, so would growth be.
*”Human”? All vertebrate eyes are practically identical, unless reduced as in many cave-living vertebrates.
Finally, it may not be possible to get to the vertebrate eye in a few million years by mutation and drift alone, but add natural selection, and you can have it within a few hundred thousand years! Simulations have been done on this.
I thought, “now that’s an exaggeration”. But there really are people who aren’t ashamed of distorting the truth just like that…
Generally they are called “Republicans”…
If you’re going to quote mine, do it right.
did darin say there aren’t any fossils from before the Cambrian? What about the Ediacarans?
And he seems to indicate that the absence of the precursors to the hard bodied life forms of the Cambrian is a big issue. Soft stuff don’t fossilize well, and we aren’t likely to find it if it’s microscopic or was quickly supplanted, silly head darin.
In that Christians themselves can’t even agree on what they believe, I would say, not necessarily.
Yes. Quote-mining is bad. Even when Liberals (capital “L”) do it (such as in the video in the entry entitled “Warmonger McCain” right here on this blog).
Yes, there are crackpots on the Right. There are also crackpots on the Left, and a number of them post comments here. (If you can’t easily spot the leftist wackos here, it’s because you are one)
I’m a bit disappointed in PZ these days, because he has fallen for his confirmation bias. I definitely enjoy this blog more when the discussion is science, and not politics.
Quote-mining the dictionary to explain away an instance of spectacular creationist quote-mining = priceless!
McCain joked about bombing Iran. Thinks it’s funny.
Nuff said.
That thread is over here.
So, just read the science articles. No one’s got a gun to your head…
negentropyeater @ 131:
Yes, that was stated poorly–I apologize. I meant to say that r bucket’s ARGUMENT about entropy doesn’t apply, because biological systems are open. (That’s what I get for writing a post after 1 AM.) Thanks for pointing that out!
Darin said:
Obvious troll is obvious. But it’s still a nice bit of orifice-ripping. Good job, PZ.
Growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness in the 1960s, I remember all of those quote mines from Watchtower literature. Obviously these Watchtower writers were getting them from the same earlier sources that Reisler and other nincompoops have been.
It wouldn’t surprise me is David Barton was involved somehow, somewhere though he tends to stick to fake / bastardized founding fathers quotes.
I believe the modern parlance is “pwnd!”
I suffer on a much lesser scale, but no less frustrating, over on my blog, whenever I cover any science topics which don’t conclude with “magic man in sky did it”.
Maybe we should build a huge tube under the ground in Geneva and fire all the world’s creationists down it, to see what happens when they collide?
PZ said it all.
My experience in “quote mining” comes from being gay. The religious right (especially Focus on the Family) loves to misquote studies on gays and lesbians. Anything to tarnish gays and lesbians of being capable and able to raise families and/or live normal lives.
Wayne Besen, a gay activist, got tired of this at started a website called Respect My Research. Check it out if you want to read about the distortion of studies on the glbt community. The website details the authors of studies asking Focus to quit misquoting their research.
http://www.respectmyresearch.org/index1.html
Perhaps evolutionists and biologists need a similar website, but I am sure it wouldn’t stop the stupidity. (Hey, maybe that could be it’s name: Stop the Stupity!)
“I would never have imagined that a scientist such as yourself (and those people who commented) would have such an EMOTIONAL response to my post.”
If you thought that scientist were cold, unemotional beings then the error lies with you (add that to the list).
“I will point out that I did not use any profanity in my post, and I did not call anybody by derogatory names or use any adjectives that were inflammatory. I did not insult anybody but merely tried to add to your conversation”
No you took quotes where people were adressing criticisms and made it look they were making the criticisms. Oh, and you took out-right fabricated quotes. You either knew of this and are therefore a liar or merely took these from somewhere without checking and are therefore lazy and stupid.
“I have much more productive things to do than to keep going back-and-forth with people who use profanity, derogatory remarks, and name-calling as a part of their tactics for debate.”
Funny you don’t address any of the actual criticisms made in the post, just that they got bad words. I guess that’s all you have when you get your ass handed to you so badly. Please don’t come back. You added nothing to the conversation except for lies. Go to AiG, you’ll fit right in, you lying sack of shit.
Kel, meet Blake. Blake, Kel.
:-)
I regard telling lies about/to someone as a serious contender for the biggest insult ever – an insult to reality / the truth (and any person being misrepresented) and an insult to the intelligence of the intended audience.
Of course, dishonest people and those of similarly poor mental hygiene, who have such a low regard for the truth that they typically don’t even bother to consider whether something is true or false before believing or saying it, wouldn’t see it the same way. They prefer their easy sham versions of politeness and respect over the genuine thing.
Religion is all about such shams – fake merit, fake respect, fake justice, fake humility, fake morality, fake reality.
But you don’t understand… just think of it like television. There may be some channels that show breasts and use the word “fuck”, but even though it’s not a show you’ll ever watch, EVERYONE must be protected from what you find inappropriate. Likewise on this blog, you have to like everything PZ because you can’t pick and choose. This is information being FORCED down our throats… ;)
Every time I see a “debate” about “the controversy”, I’m reminded of the times when I actually caught a couple of Veritas Forum debates at the University of Florida aired on the local access channel. I had recently read the entire text of “Origin of Species”, and every question questioning the neo-darwinian-synthesis was taken directly from the portion of “Origin” dealing with problems that Darwin recognized in his theory, along with possible explanations.
My roommates forced me to stop yelling at the TV at about three in the morning.
I’ve been yelling ever since.
I’ve read your Bible, if you haven’t actually read Darwin, than shut the fuck up.
As an aside, I know that Darwin is outdated, but expecting anti-evoloutionists to read anything is a bit of a stretch, so they might as well start with the primer.
Re #65: As long as this thread is, this comment will probably never be read by anyone, but I can’t let this pass–it’s one of my particular irritations.
Theories DO NOT “grow up” into laws. No matter what your high school science teacher may have told you, the old canard that hypotheses gain evidence and become theories, and if they gain *enough* evidence to be “proven,” they become laws, is simply false. It’s one of the most fundamental errors commonly heard from science teachers. Starting with the fact that there is no such thing as “proof” in science. No law or theory ever has been or ever will be “proven.”
Laws and theories are different things, with different purposes. Laws are descriptions of the behaviors of matter and energy. This iw why most laws are best described mathematically–they describe regular, predictable behavior. And they are not “proven.” They have been shown to be so reliable that we can safely treat them as “truth,” but it is not possible to ever know for sure that they are universally true.
Theories are *explanations*. That’s why they are generally a lot more complex than laws. Explanations are always more complex than descriptions. A theory is “the best that you can be” if you are a description–they never, ever become laws, just as carrots never become geraniums.
A hypothesis can contribute to the development of either or both.
So the theory of evolution–and quantum theory, and the theory of relativity, and the theory of atomic structure, and the germ theory of disease, and all the rest of our theories–will forever remain theories. This has nothing to do with how believable they are, or how much evidence there is to support them. Explanations do not somehow morph into descriptions.
Lynn
#162-I’m still reading this and i am the perpetrator of the high school level description of the scientific process. K I S for a blog. I should have said “theories are the precursors to developing an observable phenomenon into law status. If the earth destabalized from it’s axis and changed speeds, the two people left on the planet would come up with new theories and eventually new laws describing the new gravity properties, etc…
#161-I had to read all the same books (i.e. Origin of Species), pass all the same tests as anyone else in my academic career–yes college. A description of design explains things better for me than trying to describe chance. My mind sees design in life.
#142-species lines have been made fuzzy. I have some Canis Familiaris examples in my home. They are the same species but a breed apart from each other. I think that some new species examples are just a breed of an existing species. just my thought on it.
#116-The space probe to mars does fall in line with “what goes up must come down”. Calculations, boosters, and trajectory corrections to counter an expensive oops. K I S, it’s a blog you see :)
I understand frustration for those who are specialized in an area, or a few areas. I will try to be more “academic” if i make a statement, but no promises on the fine details. My dog has a hard enough time transcribing. Sorry #142- I forgot the “r” in stratum.
I still say that biological systems are closed because they fall prey to the second law of thermodynamics. They just delay it a little.
Darin,
It’s not that you are important it’s that you perfectly executed a cardinal sin on a science blog. Your sin was to make errant, inaccurate and uninformed statements. As discussed on previous posts, if you are going to present evidence you had best be able to back it up. Not only did you bring the wrong stuff to the discussion table, but under a bit of further scrutiny it was revealed that your quotes were in contradiction to your own position. Not only was your post discredited it also made you look, well, dumb. It was a mistake and can happen to the best of us.
You have nothing to fear from anyone in this community, except a bit of ridicule when you err in such a fashion. I would suggest looking at the quotes you used and PZ expanded upon to do some further reading. If you are going to attack an idea, be informed about what it means and says first. Some of it will be very dry. Others will be quite interesting. I’m certain we can provide you with a good reading list.
Late to the thread again. I haven’t read through all of the comments yet, but I thought I’d toss in my 2c anyway….
I remember discussing people quote-mining the Bible by mix-and-matching parts of passages with my Mom. Her comment to that was that you can get anything you want out of the Bible with that technique. Her example: In one place in the Bible, it says “Judas went out and hanged himself.” In another place, it says “Go, and do thou likewise!”
Thanks, Mom!
Yet randomness and selection are sufficient explanations for that “design”.
How do you know?
How would you know if you were wrong?
Owlmirror:
All biologic systems rely on chemical reactions.., Krebs cycle, photosynthesis, etc…ATP is the cells molecular storage devise and is utilized by life in a controlled fasion, otherwise poof….
endothermic or exothermic there is still a net loss and we can only observe mechanisms that are already in place that organize this (net loss of) energy…therefore we are observing a closed system. The pre-cursors to this can only be theorized. Biologic energy utilization is a mechanical molecular system where I do not see random events, but purposeful action..
Randomness and selection put together are a statistical nightmare for achieving organization. Just my opinion..but that’s what discussion is for, right..?
And? So?
Those chemical reactions do indeed involve entropy; life exists from the entropic energy flow from fusion and/or radioactive decay. Yet so what?
It’s only closed if you ignore the energy inputs.
So in other words, you see an illusion. Why should science follow your personal illusions?
That’s exactly the point, though: It’s an opinion which looks very much like an unexamined gut feeling, not something based on careful and thorough statistical analysis on biological systems.
That’s why I asked:
How do you know?
How would you know if you were wrong?
Which you did not answer.
Biologic energy utilization has been studied extensively. and it is purposeful or like I said with ATP…Poof goes life..so it is not an illusion, but an observable process.
How do you get my quotes to stand out in your reply?? That I don’t know how to do.
It’s not an unexamined gut feeling. The process of iron being able to attract and transport oxygen without oxidizing requires a cage molecule to protect the biological system from rusting. That’s not random action but purposeful. I am not claiming to be a Statistical Analyst, but I can observe probabilities and make deductions from those. If your asking for proof positive, that is not my realm. The more I figure out the less I realize I know.
There was a good article in New Scientist a couple of months ago about how they’ve found with complex systems, it’s best not to tinker with them to achieve order. Complexity and disorder are not linked at all.
Though I really don’t see how this has anything to do with evolution. It us getting more complex violated entropy, then we wouldn’t be able to have children. They grow much more complex than just having descent with modification, they grow from an embryo into a human in the space of 9 months!
Set quotes aside by using HTML:
comes out:
[blockquote]text you want to quote[/blockquote]
change the [] to the greater than / less than signs.
Dammit. between preview and post, it turned the entities into brackets. Trying that again, no preview:
<blockquote>YOUR QUOTE HERE</blockquote>
I know life can organize energy using a set of blue-prints or schematics.
Creating those blue prints or schematics by pure chance..considering the second law of thermodynamics..
This is where, for example, I can use my brain, physical energy and a schematic to build a curcuit board VS. a lightning storm(energy) and wind(random energy) building a curcuit board. (over simplified, but my point)
What is r bucket goin on about?
Pure chance??? Spoken like a true creationist.
r bucket is getting his science wrong. Iron in hemoglobin can’t rust (form iron oxides) for example. If I recall, there is a redox reaction (weak and easily reversible) going on to transport the oxygen. He gets his thermodynamics wrong. He learned a little lingo and thinks he is bright.
Since when is the process pure chance?!?
No evolutionary biologist calls it pure chance, natural selection is the opposite of chance. Mutations are random, their advantageous quality are defined by the ability to survive in their environment. It’s the opposite of chance. Advantageous mutations are cumulative, that’s the whole point of evolutionary theory. The blueprints change from generation to generation, the more advantageous blueprints survive to reproduce. Keep two groups of the same species separated and in different environments for long enough (where there is different selective pressures) and the advantageous mutations on each will differ; so much so that eventually there will be speciation. Keep this process up long enough and there will be a huge diversity, but it all stems from a common ancestor. It all is descent with modification, not chance.
Then you should be able to back up your assertions with more careful arguments.
It is a selected action. What do you even mean by “purposeful”?
Casinos profit because people think they can make deductions about probabilities.
Your deductions are practically worthless if you can’t back them up with actual math based on the biochemical evidence.
David Marjanović will probably be along at some point to explain, yet again, that “proof positive” is not what science looks for, just falsifiable evidence.
If you don’t have even that, then you don’t have anything on which to base a scientific assertion. Which is why stating that something was “designed” (by something other than natural selection, anyway) is not a scientific statement — unless you have that falsifiable evidence to present.
Then you’re doing it wrong.
As for science, the more we figure out, based on the evidence, the more we realize that each piece of evidence does connect to other pieces. It’s a slow process, and will never be completely finished, but so far, it does all work.
If you want to pooh-pooh the “Internet generation” like Austria’s previous chancellor (conservative of course) did, what are you doing on a blog?
More to the point, you have fallen among the scientists. Yes, it’s a blog, but a blog full of scientists. “Keep it simple” does not mean “distort it”.
But that’s still not true!
A law is a generalization across observations. A theory is an explanation of at least one law; it explains why the law works.
Laws are different from theories, and smaller, not larger.
What???
You had to read the Origin of Species? I bet you lie.
Which would nicely explain why you don’t understand that evolution isn’t chance. It’s chance plus natural selection — and natural selection is determined by the environment, it is not random.
This is Darwin’s very argument: breeds are incipient species. If you keep them apart for long enough, sooner or later they’ll lose the ability to interbreed and thus fulfill even the usually widest of the 25 definitions of “species”. What could stop it?
Apart from that, it’s a singular, and you treated it as a plural :-)
(That would be strata. But as I demonstrated, that’s a word nobody needs. Just say “layer”.)
Bacteria don’t. — The definition of “isolated system”, and this (not closed systems, actually) is for what the 2nd law of thermodynamics holds, is “neither matter nor energy can enter or leave”. No living being is an isolated system; I’m sure you agree. That’s why growth is possible, which in turn is why evolution is possible.
It’s natural selection: those who lack that molecule die without offspring.
Do you mean where the molecule comes from? I don’t know exactly, but very similar molecules occur elsewhere — chlorophyll is one, for example.
For the umpteenth time, by chance and selection! Some random mutations, you see, increase your chance of having surviving fertile offspring.
That’s not necessary. You already asked the basic question of science:
Kel:
There has to be a starting point for this process. I am not refering to the survival of the fittest. I fully agree that the most fit survive..
Are people reading what I say backwards?
That is the opposite of what I said. a molecule cages the iron and oxygen to be transported in the globin which prevents the oxidation process from occuring…anyway, to long to explain on a blog..my wifes time on the computer is up and mine is about out..
Then they are fools with math:) but having a great time making others rich!!!
Figuring out our world and the universe should lead to more questions than answers..that’s the fun, and it should be fun.
That is the root of this thread, did life start with purpose or did life start without purpose. (philosophical).
You are trying a backdoor into us accepting a Creator(TM). No dice. It is up to you to prove a Creator(TM) in order to prove a purpose. Otherwise, life is total random until you prove4 otherwise.
I have read many parts from the actual book itself, and not from someone elses mishmash of it. I can’t say I have read every word though and I found Darwin’s idea of a cell very basic (although I am sure cutting edge at the time). I might even have a copy in storage, but I can’t remember. If I remeber right, the assignments in classes weren’t the whole book, but sections of the book. anyway, I’m not here to have a silly debate like that. What ZOO class doesn’t require looking at that text. In college Darwin was like the king of modern thought on the explanation of diversity in life.
Yes, it’s called organic chemistry. The process of abiogenesis. There’s still research into it, but it doesn’t negate evolution in any way. As you could imagine, trying to work out the exact details of a process that happened around 3.8 billion years ago is very challenging.
Evolution accounts for the increase in complexity, it accounts for mutations, for body shapes, for speciation, it does not account for the origin of it all. Evolution does not stop working in the absence of an adequate theory of abiogenesis.
Science tends to give those who make breakthroughs a lot of respect. But science, as and endeavor, goes beyond what the breakthrough scientist come up with. With Darwin, the discovery of DNA gives the mechanism and explanation, through mutations, copying, etc. of how evolution can occur. Don’t get hung up one scientist.
Figuring things out should lead to more questions, yes… but the answers should (and do) mean that you do actually know more about the universe than you did before you started.
And that, too, is fun.
Sigh. Sorry, you’re still not being clear.
If you mean “an actual intelligence kicking things off”, could you say so?
And could you explain how that presupposed intelligence could exist or come into existence without requiring the same complexities observed in all living intelligences?
Ahh, skyhooks and cranes. Going for a skyhook explanation (Goddidit) only leads to where God came from. To call God a causeless cause is an reductio ad absurdum, especially when trying to explain complexity by invoking an even more complex being. In the end, there has to be a natural method that brings about a being of intelligence and strength. That crane is evolution.
If we are a product of design, then our designer has to be of design from another designer. Eventually we have to go to a cause of a design that doesn’t require a designer, and the only way we know that intelligence can come about is through natural selection. In effect, the laws of nature are God. They are the fashioners of everything we see around us, it designed us through a naturalistic means. There’s no intelligence required, just the laws of physics.
That is my statement. I can learn and know more about the world around me, which in turn poses more question. So I realize, out of what there is to know, I know less than I did before.
I do not believe science can prove that God doesn’t exist and I do not believe science can prove that God does exist. Hence faith, hence this blog.
Scientist decided that a couple of centuries back. Science and gods don’t speak to one another.
No not this blog. We don’t discuss faith, since it can’t be proven.
This is where my, I believe bloggers call it, “woowoo”? stuff starts. Dimensional planes that are not confined to our idea of physics, space-time, and chemistry. I’ll call it “Faith” and I know I can’t prove or defend my point. So please no “burn the witch” stuff:) And I must add not one solid scientific discovery has rattled my faith..so for whatever that’s worth..
I agree with you r bucket that science and religon should be kept seperate. The problem is that the two aren’t. When someone claims God was behind a hurricane or an earthquake, that’s bringing a supernatural force into a natural occurance. Likewise when someone says life is too complex to be made without a creator, that’s again intersecting science and religion. So after asserting that God had to have a hand in the process of life, saying that science and religion are two different realms is just being contradictory.
Science is concerned with the how, if God is to be the why, so be it. But to invoke God in explaining the how is to bring God into the scientific realm. That should never happen, God should be kept well away from explaning how life came to be. So I’m kind of confused how believers can talk in one moment of God playing a part, then the next talk about God being out of the realm of science. If God played a part, it should be evident.
Ah, but you see..If you believe God does not exist, since that can’t be proven..then you have “faith”. Which was the point of this blog…If you are neutral, then you are faithless on the matter.
Occam’s razor. Presume gods don’t exist until proven otherwise. Show me a good burning bush like Moses had, you might have something.
Will burning weed suffice? ;)
Kel, add in a little cactus juice, and the wackiness of the Bible is explained.
To be honest, for my personal self, the two do combine, the complexity all around me is evidence (among other things), but I am coming from a point of Faith. So that is where the interweaving takes place. In all my years I have not convinsed someone of God through science because it is such a personal thing. When people who do not believe in God attack those who do, it also interlaces the issue, and I think that is where lies the rub..
You guys are fun to talk with.. and funny!
but i do believe in the Bible, soo.. oh well. I’m certifiable. I’m ok with it.
Hm. I’ve noticed that theists are often kind of vague about what God actually is.
For example, Kel @#187 wrote “In effect, the laws of nature are God.”. That’s a form of Pantheism, and I would agree that it would not be possible to “disprove” such a statement.
But if you think that God is an actual person (or even person-like), then I think it could be argued that such a God can indeed be proven to not exist: Any God that had any awareness of humanity at all, and even a smidgen of benevolence, would not hide from humans, but would demonstrate its existence clearly.
Yet this sort of thing only makes sense if God is utterly indifferent towards, or unaware of, human beings.
See, I don’t get this. We know that complexity is not evidence of a higher intelligence. So when you say it somehow counts as evidence for you, what you are saying is that you choose not to hold your beliefs to any reasonable standard of evidence. That you will in fact cling to bad arguments if they support the conclusion you prefer. This is de facto intellectual dishonesty. You don’t get to say on one hand that you accept failed arguments, on then on the other pretend that you are a reasonable man. Those two things are mutually incompatible. And wallpapering over that inconsistency by labeling your failings “faith” is not a fix. Also, people who point this out are not “attacking” you. They are attacking a bad position. It’s your choice to remain there.
Don’t forget about some mild ergot poisoning too.
Have you considered that it’s a reaction to those who try and push God’s hand on the scientific realm? Science for it to be a seperate realm has to operate with no assumption of any deity at all. We need to know how life came about, we use scientific methods. To say “Goddidit” is a scientific statement, make no mistake about it. This is why most atheists have no problems with the likes of Ken Miller or Francis Collins, but have problems with the likes of Michael Behe and Stephen C Meyer. There is a huge difference between seeing God as the source and God as the tinkerer. So of course atheists are going to rebel when people push God as the tinkerer, as the principle of parsimony goes there is no reason to assume an untestable entity is there manipulating it all.
Calling that faith is not diffusing the issue at all, it’s still pushing your God into science. As a personal belief, that’s fine. You are welcome to it and while I think it’s dead wrong, ultimately what you believe is up to you. Where the problem lies is that the God hypothesis is being pushed on others, whether through communal interaction, or a push in the science classroom.
In 1991, they did a study on american beliefs regarding evolution. They found that about 50% are creationists, about 40% believe in evolution but God guiding the process, and only 9% believed God had no hand in it at all. Yet this is the view shared by 99% of scientists. So why is there such a great disparity between the process of evolution as understood by scientists and understood by the general population? There’s a big problem when one of the most solid scientific theories is either distorted or flat-out rejected by most people in favour of mythology.
Taking God out of the process is paramount to understanding the process itself. If God was in there acting as an active agent, then it would cease to be natural selection; rather it would be artificial selection.
Which parts of the bible? For example, the part about keeping the Sabbath? You avoid driving or otherwise lighting fires on Saturday?
Except it isn’t evidence of what you claim at all. If it were, you should have no trouble explaining just how it is evidence supporting your claim and, just as crucially, in what way it would look different if your claim were not true – ie that all important “How would you know if you were wrong?” question. Tellingly, you haven’t been able to do that – because you are wrong.
Untrue. Your failure is because you are wrong – viz that you don’t have evidence supporting your claim. Mere complexity is not evidence of any god, let alone evidence for some specific god – ie meeting the various other requirements people have of their imaginary friend(s).
I’m not entirely sure that is pantheism, although it does sound very pantheistic. I’d consider pantheism more like the Brahman sense of the term, where it’s an innate intelligence that consciously and with purpose guides the universe.
My statement was not that in the slightest, it’s nothing more than recognition that we are a product of the natural forces that are present in the universe. No intelligence, no purpose, no meaning, so in that it doesn’t feel very pantheistic at all. Just like I’m a product of my parents, eventually it must be recognised that we are a product of the universe. We are limited by it’s laws, the laws of physics. If that’s pantheism, then I guess I’m a pantheist. To me it just seems like applied rational empiricism.
The Bible exists though, albeit in multiple differing editions and with self-contradictory and reality-contradicted contents. Unlike gods, there’s evidence for Bibles. I even have a few of the things around to examine. They are of human manufacture from start to finish, no deities required even for “inspiration”.
Worse than that, it sounds as though you’re proud of it and unwilling to risk giving it up by actually examining the real evidence (instead of what you falsely call evidence) and being rational about what that shows.
Well, that’s why I wrote “a form of pantheism”. It does look similar to what Einstein seems to have meant by “God”, although I admit that from the various writings that we have, Einstein was to some degree vague and unclear on what, exactly, he believed. Sometimes it seemed like totally impersonal pantheism, sometimes like a sort of weak Deism (which is what I would call anything that suggests anything that brings in a God “that consciously and with purpose guides the universe”). As usual, the problem is the definition, which can rapidly become incoherent.
Sorry if I cut anyone short but I can’t keep up with everyone here. I’m a slooowwww typer. Suffice it to say that I believe in God, so all of life is evidence of God. I don’t believe humans came from a primortial soup, (if that’s still the current teaching) but I do believe God designed life with the ability to adapt to a changing world, which is what I have observed in my studies, but not for a cingle cell……. fish …….human (dots represent in-between steps) sequence. This has not been proven. I hope I have never shoved my beliefe in God down anyones throat because that defeats the purpose of it being personal. Anyway it has been fun, I know I left a bunch of stuff hanging, sorry. Family first, and this could turn into full time habit if I let it.
R Bucket, we have a regular poster by the name of Scot Hatfield who is a believer. He is willing to talk to people, and has posted an e-mail on occasion for people such as yourself. You may want to try to contact him.
thanks for the info, it’s been a pleasure and i’ll check in from time to time.
Maybe a good quote about PZ Myers would be quote mining of PZ Myers.
. “Our only problem is that we aren’t martial enough, or vigorous enough, or loud enough, or angry enough.” He wrote, “The only appropriate responses should involve some form of righteous fury, much butt-kicking, and the public firing and humiliation of some teachers..,”
Now really how intolerant and bigoted for a self proclaimed liberal. Maybe he can set up “reeducation camps” like the Red Guard did during the cultural revolution in Red China?
It is interesting that even though Dr. Myers is so scientific , he has NO data to prove his ideas. Can he name one study that shows ID teachers have students that are inferior to the standard evolutionist. NO, so he uses an emotional and subjective appeal to get his followers to rant and rave to the local school boards. Maybe he should not use his platform of a public funded professor to go around the country spouting forth his hate and misinformation? Now really, if he had sent this on a school email, he would have been in big trouble for harrassment.
Since you bloggers only have the choir to preach to usually, I thought it maybe would be therapeutic for you to have someone disagree with you.
Coach, can you show me five articles from the journals Science and Nature that support the concept of ID? That is how you prove ID is scientific. Until you do that, ID belongs in a comparative religion class. And you know it.
Figures… it’s a Coach.
Common ancestry has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. DNA and the building blocks of life demonstrate it quite well. We can see patterns in genetics, we can see the same building blocks in those patterns, this could only be a result of common ancestry.
The only other option is God is fucking with us by making it look like there is common ancestry…
Damn, like Einstein? I was going for the more Carl Sagan approach to it all. :P
Comments like this have been coming up a lot lately. Is it in the ilk of “science is your religion” or “atheism is a faith”?
It seems an odd thing to say, tolerance is not keeping your mouth shut at any opposing idea. It isn’t part of post modernist philosophy where ideas are equivalent. Calling someone a liar is not being intolerant if they are lying.
#210
Nerd of Redhead wrote:
Forget Science and Nature, there’s not a single piece of data presented in a peer-reviewed scientific research paper supporting ID. That’s out of seventeen million citations publicly indexed at the National Library of Medicine. They’re batting a perfect 0.000. Yeah, that ID is one burgeoning scientific theory!
There’s actually a couple of peer reviewed articles in some obscure science magazines. They are nowhere near the standard of Nature or Science, but they do exist.
“Maybe a good quote about PZ Myers would be quote mining of PZ Myers.”
I don’t know if I’d call that a quote-mining, since it doesn’t really distort PZ’s views, but it is rather curious that the nuts always use that one particular quote. Must be because it has spent a long time floating around the wingnut-o-sphere. I sure doubt that all of them actually got it from the actual source. Which makes it a sort of lazy quote to use.
“Can he name one study that shows ID teachers have students that are inferior to the standard evolutionist.”
So much wrong in one sentence. It’s breathtaking. First of all, what do we mean by ID teachers? More importantly, what do we mean by “inferior”? How do we measure this? And finally, just what the hell does that have to do with whether or not evolution is the best theory to explain the diversity of life and whether ID is at all scientific?
“It is interesting that even though Dr. Myers is so scientific , he has NO data to prove his ideas.”
Just because you’ve never seen the data in your no-doubt curiosity-free existance, doesn’t mean it’s not out there.
“Now really, if he had sent this on a school email, he would have been in big trouble for harrassment.”
That’s why a wise man once said “There’s a time and place for everything.”
“Since you bloggers only have the choir to preach to usually, I thought it maybe would be therapeutic for you to have someone disagree with you.”
You give yourself too much credit.
There’s actually a couple of peer reviewed articles in some obscure science magazines.
Those are walks. They’re still batting .000
Can you put that analogy into a slightly more universal sport please? Baseball isn’t big here.
r bucket,
re your 206 :
As to your cell..fish…human argument that you claim to have studied,may I suggest Neil Shubin’s “Your Inner Fish” to clear up some of the misconceptions you obviously suffer from.
It e.g contains a nice example of how introducing a certain mouse eye gene into a fruit fly and switching it on created a fly eye at the site.How does ID explain that?Gawd running low on building material at the time,so he had to use the same stuff for all the animals?
And whats so horrifying about primordial soup?
Oh,and as to Mr Reisler,pompous self-loving smug,there is no such thing as an Evolutionist,its a term from the Reichsministry of Propaganda(the DI)and its affiliates,and your use of it clearly shows your colors.
As to quote-mining,par for the course for your ilk,no surprises there.
Religion of evolution….YAWN
Historical evidence for my faith in cobbled together bronze age mythologies…YAWN
I did not originally plan on making another post because of how derogatory this blog is. However, after researching I am compelled to make another entry.
Within communities of faith there tends to be one “authority” (i.e. a “Creator”) and one absolute doctrine (i.e. the Bible). Within the evolutionary community there are multiple authority figures and they have multiple publications. It’s usually quite easy to research something somebody claims is from a standard religious text. You can just go to the text. Researching evolution is not as easily done, as the theory changes and new text is consistently published (and there are television appearances these days, too). As a result, people who hold to creationist theories often rely on others they believe are credible to relay information. Notably, this is done within any professional community amongst colleagues. Different standards are required to relay this information (i.e. updating somebody at the “water cooler” about a news story covered over the weekend versus publishing in a professional journal requires differing levels of scrutiny).
Seeing as the quotes I used were originally in response to an anecdote and they were made on a blog, my level of scrutiny on the quotes wasn’t that high. I had believed they were from a trustworthy source and were legitimate. I have done research and it appears that my source of the quotes is not credible. For this I apologize. My intention was not to “lie” or to “quote-mine.” I do apologize for any and all misrepresentations.
With that said, the personal attacks- all of them- even yours PZ are way out of line. It appears you deal with the quote issue a lot and you are highly frustrated. I get frustrated when people take quotes from the text I hold sacred out of context, too (and/or when they express it says things that it does not). Attacking people doesn’t usually benefit anybody, though.
Also, it is easy to deduce that somebody who uses an easily identifiable real name in a public forum is more than likely not a fraudulent liar doing a drive-by. I am disappointed that so many of you, likely educators, showed such hate and intolerance.
The quotes themselves did not turn out to be good evidence of my desired point- evolution requires faith. However, I believe this blog makes that point. I encourage people to read it and to come to there own decision as to whether there is an element of faith involved within the theory of evolution. If so, I believe both sides of this topic deserve attention within our educational systems.
I will sign off with an expression I have held close for some time. As far as I’m aware this is a Chinese proverb, and I am not aware of it coming from a religious text. I just enjoy it, and I am sharing:
“If you plan for a year- plant rice.
If you plan for ten years- plant a tree.
If you plan for a lifetime- educate the people.”
With Peace,
Darin
P.S. This entry is somewhat of a “drive-by.” I have spent a considerable amount of my week researching; it’s very late, and I have a lot of actual “work” I need to get done. I will check back, though.
Dude.
Seriously.
That makes as much sense as saying “I believe in Santa Claus, so all Christmas stuff is evidence of Santa Claus”.
Can you at least attempt to understand basic logic and epistemology?
“Primordial soup” is a catchy, simple term which masks the genuine biochemical complexity of abiogenesis. And yes, of course abiogenesis is still current; the hypothesis that self-replicating, metabolizing living organisms arose from complex chemical reactions follows from the evidence of biology and biochemistry.
However, unlike God, abiogenesis can be falsifiably tested — and research into “origins of life” biochemistry is progressing tolerably well.
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/07/what-critics-of.html
http://exploringorigins.org/protocell.html
And so on.
Dude. The world has been changing for 4.5 billion years.
Why would life stop adapting?
Palaeontology has the fossils.
Biochemistry has the molecules.
Genomics has the DNA.
Science has the evidence.
Science wins.
You might not shove, but you certainly do wriggle.
Wrong.
The “creator” never talks, so the only authority is the human being who convinces everyone else that he knows what the “creator” really wants. When there are two or more such human beings, your “community of faith” usually has a schism.
And your “absolute” doctrine is not absolute. You believe in the interpretation offered by the human being whose interpretation convinces you, and these interpretations have mutated over the past few thousand years.
Or have you bothered observing the Sabbath recently?
Gah, so much fail in such a short space.
There is a reason why science is not faith, it’s based on evidence. And as more evidence comes in, the science changes. If people were going to say that Evolution is as Darwin predicted with nothing can ever change that, then yes, it would be a faith. But since science is based on evidence, the theory of evolution has been modified to account for that said evidence. We now know of genetic drift, we have mechanisms under which mutations work, there is great discussion involving gradualism and punctuated equilibrium. Evolution has changed from it’s original form, because that’s what science does.
The difference between science and religion is that science is willing to change with new evidence. Darin, you’ve simply failed to even understand this distinction… let alone apply it.
The basics don’t change that rapidly. Just open any modern book that is based on the current peer-reviewed research.
I like Evolution, the triumph of an idea, by Carl Zimmer. But any modern college biology textbook (again, based on the current peer-reviewed research) should be sufficient.
Sheesh.
I kind of suspect that you really don’t understand the scientific process at all.
If God were real and religion were true, there would be no “out-of-context” quotes; the bible would be at the very least internally consistent. And there would therefore be only one religion. Since God is not real, and religion is false, there are therefore the constant internicine struggles and arguments over what parts of the text are important, and what the “true” meaning is. Since there is no test in reality to determine the truth, the arguments and fighting continues.
Which is exactly what evolutionary biologists are doing.
Good grief, who do think sequences the genomes of rice, trees, and people, in order to better understand them, and educate people in what was learned? What do you think peer-reviewed publication is, if not the ongoing education of humanity in the evidence of reality?
The equivalent to what Darin did would be to say God is a three-footed Bunyip that goes into the houses at night and eats little children, then call God absurd because of that. Darin if you can’t see why misquoting scientists to argue against evolution is nothing other than dishonest then I pray (to gravity) for your reasoning skills. It’s a shame people like you think it’s okay to build a strawman out of evolution to knock it down, then appeal to intolerance or calling it a faith in order to stem criticism. You’ve been nothing short of intellectually dishonest.
Can you put that analogy into a slightly more universal sport please? Baseball isn’t big here.
Haha! Baseball, the unbreakable American code. We’d only have to worry about the Japanese and the Cubans, and we’ve never had any problems with them… er
As for the analogy, I don’t know. I don’t think it translates very well. Batting average is the ratio of base hits (safely reaching base on a hit ball) to at-bats expressed as a three digit decimal. A walk is a base on balls (bad pitches) and it doesn’t count as an at-bat, so a walk doesn’t figure into batting average.
Suggesting that the ID papers were given a free pass in one way or another. “Peer review” is pretty dubious when the peers in question are all pseudoscience advocates to some degree.
#216 Kel wrote:
Such papers exist, but they present no data, which is why I phrased my statement as specifically and vehemently as I did. None of the papers touted by the Discovery Institute provide data and evidence in support of ID. Their papers include data-free hypothesis pieces by Jonathan Wells and John Davison published in Rivista di Biologia, a review article by Stephen Meyer in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington that was officially repudiated by the journal, and a computer algorithm by Douglas Axe in PLoS ONE, which the academic editor explicitly stated in the comments section did not provide results in support of ID. I’m a scientist and I’ve written and reviewed many scientific papers – when we get sloppy and count these papers as data in support of ID, we inadvertently mislead the public and damage our own arguments.
James F, I am well aware of the lack of support for ID in the scientific journals. I just mentioned a small number and specific peer reviewed journals, where Nobel prize winning research is often published first, to make it sound easy to find. Of course, the coach will come up empty. But it did establish the need for specific evidence, not just vague claims.
I think the coach was a hit and run poster.
Nerd of Redhead,
It was not meant as a knock at you at all; my apologies if it came across that way! I just wanted to stress for the general readership that the evidence and data are nowhere to be found, because when people who want to be fair (like Kel) acknowledge that there are a handful of peer-reviewed papers by the DI folks, it makes it look like ID has a case, when it doesn’t. This is a very sore issue with me because I see how the DI takes advantage of the fact that the average nonscientist has no idea of the difference between a review article and research article.
Great Cosmic Muffin Son!!!!!11 Do you not realize that saying the beast’s name alerts it to our presence?!?!
@ r bucket #206:
Ah, but it isn’t sufficient. Your “evidence” isn’t really any such thing, since it fails to fulfil the role you require of it. Furthermore, I suspect you know this yourself on some level and are just being dishonest.
If your position had merit you would have been able to show that in the same amount of time and words it took you to dodge the issue and cry off instead. The truth is that you’re running away because you know you can’t support your claims rather than because of family commitments. Those are just a convenient excuse.
I want to say I completely agree. I just didn’t want to see it fly in his face when a couple of articles that were published in obscure (yet authentic) journals were pulled out. ID has no credibility, I want to make that perfectly clear. One or two peer reviewed articles does not make it comparable to evolutionary theory. Just wanted to point out asking for any article published anywhere will lead to a couple of articles.
Indeed, Kel. There are really three questions and one must specify which is being asked very cautiously:
1) Have pro-ID scientists published peer-reviewed scientific research papers? Yes, since some have published perfectly valid research on non-ID topics, like Scott Minnich’s work on Yersinia pestis.
2) Have pro-ID scientists published pro-ID peer-reviewed scientific papers? Giving the DI the benefit of the doubt about what constitutes “pro-ID,” a technical yes, because of the handful of hypothesis papers and review articles mentioned above.
3) Has anyone published data in support of ID in peer-reviewed scientific papers? No, and this is the point that needs to be driven home.
Then you live in a strange place. I have never looked at that text. It was never a requirement, not even for an optional course, or even just encouraged.
No, that’s not how it works. Whether something is evidence for an idea does not depend on whether anyone believes that idea to be true. You can’t choose what to accept as evidence. Whether something is evidence
foragainst an idea is a fact!Nothing has ever been proven outside of math and formal logic.
Nothing can ever be proven outside of math and formal logic.
All science can do is disprove. If an idea disagrees with an observation, the idea is wrong. The theory of evolution could be disproven (find a Silurian rabbit!), but it still hasn’t been; it agrees with every single observation so far. That’s a lot.
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Wake me up when PZ threatens violence, let alone acts on it. Wake me up when he advocates ignoring the First Amendment — something cdesign proponentsists do all the time.
Whether an idea is wrong doesn’t depend on how smart its proponents are. Learn to distinguish ideas from people. Grow up, in other words.
Evidently you are new here. We get ignorant creationists weekly, often daily, who want us to respect their ignorance as if it were knowledge.
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You see, you have fallen among the scientists. We have trained long and hard to call a spade a spade — not a stick, not a shovel, but a spade.
So when you come along and spread lies that we have encountered 20 times before, how do you expect us to react?
Even this analogy is not good enough. There are in reality no authority figures and no absolute doctrine at all in science. There are ideas, and there are observations; ideas that are found to contradict observations are discarded (some more quickly, some less, but still).
Bingo.
Nooooo. You’ll need to show us evidence that there’s faith involved. Hand-waving like this doesn’t count.
You are still making an argument from ignorance, as we are used to from creationists. Become aware of what you know and what you don’t know. Learn.
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“There are no sects in geometry”
— Voltaire
Where reality can be found out, there are no schisms; where people can be shown to be wrong, they get over it.
Not much anymore. Both occur in the fossil record, punk eek more often than gradualism. (pdf)
Not quite. Where people who are intellectually honest and who have a respect for the evidence of reality can be shown to be wrong, they get over it. The dishonest people who have little to no respect for evidence will not accept or get over being shown to be wrong.
#236:
then you should read chapter V. Adding a now known genotype vs. phenotype perspective to it gives an interesting twist.
It’s been known for a long time that Darwin got some things wrong, especially the exact workings of heredity. That’s why Darwin’s work, while seminal and important in the history of science, is no longer a requirement. Evolutionary biology has advanced past his ignorance.