Will Knowland was a teacher at Eton who was dismissed for making a video claiming that patriarchy was good after being told not to — I’m not keen on the idea of firing someone for expressing an opinion, but I do think it’s reasonable to fire teachers for ignorance and incompetence. Knowland has gone on to make more videos to demonstrate just how stupid he is. He has chosen to claim that evolution is false. Big mistake. Especially since his arguments are pathetic.
I have the transcript. Let’s see how big a dumbass Will Knowland is.
here are eight things about Evolution that I wasn’t taught in school
Correct. He wasn’t taught the following things in school because they are wrong.
0:05 number one because Free Will is real and humans are rational any materialistic account of our Origins is certainly false this means darwinian materialistic evolution is and that’s why people who hold that worldview end up denying human rationality and Free Will including their own the two stand or fall together
I think free will arguments are all bad, no matter what side you take, so I’m not going to touch that one. The argument about rationaility, though, I think, is already refuted, because his claims are all irrational. Humans aren’t particularly rational — we’re all creatures of emotion and bias, and I note that Knowland fails to provide any supporting evidence or arguments otherwise. It’s an assertion with no rational support.
It’s also false to claim that science and evolution, specifically, require the rejection of rationality.
0:32 number two the oldest rocks on Earth date from 3.8 to 3.98 billion years ago but life was present 3.81 billion years ago so life had only 100 to 170 million years to evolve that is an instant a blink of the eye in evolutionary time
Remember that: 100 to 170 million is a blink of the eye. I’m inclined to think that 100 million years is an incredibly long time — lots can happen in a million years or a thousand. The origin of life was a process of chemical evolution. How many chemical reactions can occur in that span of time?
0:58 number three there’s no evidence for concentrated organic pools on early Earth no empirical evidence whatsoever and without a blueprint to direct it and convert it raw energy isn’t usable anyway but since these are only produced by life this is the Catch-22 and don’t say life came from space that just pushes the problem one step back where did it begin if it came from space
How concentrated is concentrated? Is he claiming to be a quantitative organic chemist now?
The best models for the origin of life now suggest it arose in deep-sea volcanic vents, which are rich in the precursors for organic molecules, and also provide the energy necessary for the reactions to produce them. Right now, electrons are being shuffled across inorganic substrates, reducing compounds and creating the building blocks of life without “blueprints.” It’s all chemistry. All of life is chemistry.
OK, I won’t say life came from space. That’s just bullshit anyway. Why does Knowland feel the need to put bogus arguments into his critics’ mouths?
1:33 number four there are millions of transitional forms organisms observable across successive Generations appear fully formed they have no ancestors or Bridges and they don’t change and don’t say punctuated equilibrium that is empirically equivalent to creationism
At least he admits that there are many transitional forms, but it’s weird that he then claims they can have no ancestors. All organisms are functional, or they wouldn’t exist. Evolution is all about changes from one fully functional organism to a different fully functional organism by small successive variations. We’d be very surprised to discover a species that arose from a non-viable population of incomplete organisms.
Again, he puts a bogus argument in our mouths. Punctuated equilibrium is about rates of change in subsets of a population. It’s not a version of creationism. Eldredge and Gould would be very surprised to be told that they have invented a creationist theory.
1:57 number five some structures require the whole structure to be in place to be functional imagine having one tenth of an eye or one one hundredth of a heart or one one thousandth of a penis
Most birds, to name one counter-example. Most birds (excepting ducks, obviously) lack a penis and mate by cloacal kissing. Clearly you don’t need a whole massive 3mm long penis to successfully reproduce, as he should know since he has 7 children.
Similarly, we evolved from organisms that have little more than a muscular tube for a heart and an open circulatory system, or that have only an eyespot that can only sense light and dark. We have a plethora of examples of simpler hearts, eyes, and reproductive organs that are entirely functional.
2:19 number six there are built-in limits to genetic material Darwin thought natural selection worked a bit like dog breeding but humans can’t make a dog the size of an ant or a whale and we definitely can’t create a new species out of dogs and that’s despite centuries of intelligent intervention speciation has never been observed
What are the mechanisms that impose these limits? He doesn’t say. Creationists never do. Besides, speciation has been observed.
Refer back to his objection number two, where he says 100 to 170 million is an eyeblink, yet now he argues that the limitations of a few centuries refutes evolution.
2:49 number seven DNA is literally not figuratively a code it embodies meaningful information it’s like the typewriter not the message there’s currently a 10 million dollar prize for anyone who can demonstrate a naturally encoding and decoding system nobody can
Man, that metaphor went kablooieeee. So DNA is literally a code, like a typewriter? What? None of that makes sense.
The existence of loons who want to offer a prize for demonstrating something that silly is not a point in its favor, especially since they’re going to automatically reject the existence of the “encoding and decoding system” embodied in cells. This $10 million prize does sort of exist, at least as a PR stunt and hype engine for Perry Marshall, a guy with a degree in electrical engineering and no understanding of biology at all. He doesn’t have $10 million to give away, so the entire “prize” is contrived to make sure no one can possibly win. That is not a point in its favor.
3:12 number eight cells edit their own DNA in real time in response to threats this isn’t random and there is variation and adaptation before natural selection can occur talking about selfish genes also assumes the very teleology and purpose that Darwin explicitly denied
I don’t think he’s talking about gene editing here — that’s a completely different phenomenon. Since it’s “in response to threats” I suspect he’s mangling the idea of modifying gene expression in response to the environment. There’s nothing in that counter to the idea of evolution whatsoever. It’s a natural and well-understood biochemical and physiological process.
The selfish gene concept does not assume teleology. Some gene sequences can use cellular machinery to amplify their representation in the genome. That’s all.
3:37 and then we’ve got metaphysical problems life didn’t come from non-life animal life didn’t come from plant life man the rational animal didn’t come from non-rational animals these are all differences in kind not degree go into your garden pick up a stone and look at it and think of it one day evolving into being able to compose a symphony solve a theorem write a novel you can’t evolve a thin line into a thick one by simply extending it that’s what it’s like trying to get life from non-life animal life from plant life rational life man from non-rational Life The Brute animals
Those look like metaphysical assumptions, not problems. Animals evolved independently from the lineage that gave rise to plants, for one thing. Life had to have come from non-life, unless you think life has existed eternally. Stones don’t evolve, since they don’t reproduce. This all sounds like incoherent word vomit from a guy who doesn’t understand anything he’s babbling about.
Now for his grand conclusion…
4:24 so what do I think about Evolution now the church fathers are clear that God could have worked through evolutionary processes in creating man’s body but certainly not in creating his intellect and at least some creatures were created fully formed and many stemmed evolution of the others was involved
I don’t give a flying fuck what the “church fathers” said. They aren’t authorities on evolution by any stretch of the imagination.
Well, that’s all he’s got. Once again, a creationist demonstrates the paucity of intellect behind their reasoning, and their whole position goes down in flames. Maybe he needs to stop assuming that he is a rational being and try to earn that adjective.
Bedrock in Canada is 4.28 billion years old
Forget it, he’s rolling.
I’ve only gotten to #2 and already his arguments are obviously stupid and flawed.
The oldest rocks we have aren’t the way we date the age of the earth.
The earth is 4.54 billion years old.
So the time between when the earth formed and the earliest evidence for life is 730 million years.
That is a long time.
Raven @ 3
For those who are interested, Youtube has quite a few videos about the earliest era of the Earth, aka the Hadean. And really a lot about biogenesis even if it is quite speculative in nature- biomolecules do not leave big geological traces.
Although non-racemic carbon compound traces are pretty suggestive.
This isn’t at all true.
Especially at the germ line level.
The only exception is a Darwinian process involving the adaptive immune system. In B and T cells, …(wikipedia) Several complex genetic mechanisms have evolved that allow vertebrate B cells to generate a diverse pool of antibodies from a relatively small number of antibody genes.[57]
Binding to novel antigens then selects out the antibodies that are further clonally expanded.
But this isn’t inheritable.
This guy doesn’t have even a grade school understanding of biology and genetics.
AFAICT here, he is reinventing Lamarckian evolution, which was long ago proved wrong.
His job is to educate the future generation of upper class twits… in no way like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSqkdcT25ss
Looks like he might be qualified…
“Humans are rational?” What bubbleverse is he living in? Dismissed.
He’s not even doing Christianity well.
The “Church Fathers” is not a generic term for theologians. It is a specific historical term referring to the foundational generations of Christian thinkers who came up with the doctrines in the first place. At its narrowest it encompasses the generation of thinkers including Augustine, Jerome and Ambrose in the 4th-5th Centuries AD, at its widest anyone from the 1st to 8th Century AD (very, very occasionally someone will include the 11th-12th Century theologians Anselm and Bernard of Clairvaux).
The Church Fathers have thus not got anything at all to say on the theory of evolution, because they all died over a thousand years before it was formulated.
I would say that his former students ought to ask for the eye-watering sums of money their parents paid back, but we all know Eton isn’t about education so much as networking with the future ruling class.
Fuck. That’ll be another generation of entitled twits who have little grasp of reality but who will get to form a government in thirty years time. Eton and its like should be razed to the ground.
This is pure Hovind/Ham/Comfort trash. How did he get a teaching job?
Raven already kinda covered this above. Knowland was vague about it. He could be confusely talking about adaptive immunity where lymphocytes have specific regions of their antigen receptor genes rearranged during development to generate diversity and B-lymphocytes undergo hypermutation of their antigen receptor (antibody) genes in the process known as affinity maturation and ALSO undergo another type of recombination during class switching:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10774/
But there’s a bacterial adaptive immunity provided by CRISPR mechanisms which I know little about:
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/genomicresearch/genomeediting/
Who knows which Knowland was referring to. In the case of adaptive immunity in humans it allows us to fight off pathogens with far more rapid life cycles and capacity to evolve as populations. Look how much SARS-CoV-2 has evolved in several years compared to affected human populations.
Bloke looks like a rugby player.
DNA as a code? DNA as a typewriter? Whatever that may mean —
https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/innovation/hello-data-dna-storage/
Snippet —
Researchers from Microsoft and the University of Washington have demonstrated the first fully automated system to store and retrieve data in manufactured DNA — a key step in moving the technology out of the research lab and into commercial datacenters.
In a simple proof-of-concept test, the team successfully encoded the word “hello” in snippets of fabricated DNA and converted it back to digital data using a fully automated end-to-end system, which is described in a new paper published March 21 in Nature Scientific Reports.
The TrueAI summary:
“I’m a wanker. I have no background in science or reasoning, not even a bachelor’s degree in any of the sciences or in nonreligious philosophy. I do not know the precise details of the origin of life, therefore all theorization by people who have studied that precise subject for decades must be incorrect.
“And remember: I’m a wanker. An important wanker because I taught at an important
privatepublic school for the children of important people (just ask them). So I’m right, and because I’m right it must be clear to all right-thinking white Christian men that non si muove.“Now give me my job back!”
• • •
After having had to deal with UK government officials exactly like Mr
WankerKnowland during the depths of the Thatcher and Major administrations — right down to the Etonism (rhymes with “hedonism” when applied to bank accounts and… lifestyle preferences) — I’m entirely unsurprised.DNA is not a code, it is a chemical.
Eton is one of the few remaining UK ‘public’ (i.e., important private) schools that has an all male student body (women can and are teachers) and it is known for producing future political leaders (Boris Johnson is an Old Etonian and one of over 20 who’ve been UK Prime Minister).
He was an English & English Literature teacher. He has an English teacher’s degree. He is unencumbered with any knowlege of science.
What an obviously dishonest, no-positive-features asshole he is!
And this is, due probably to the effects of the “dark side” of the internet, is probably the Golden Age of truly horrible people becoming “famous”!
Anti-vaxxers, Creationists, racists, anti-LGBTQ people… and more — it’s horrible to know I simply write so many people off immediately as being reasonable enough to listen to about ANYTHING actually important.
What a consciously evil person this Will Knowland is. How inexcusably stupid and evil those who agree with him want to be.
Quite a feat, since the letter ‘O’ is not assigned to any of the 20 standard amino acids coded by the genetic code.
DNA and RNA codon tables
Teacup Chihuahuas and Great Danes.* Not exactly ant or whale sized but then why would we want to create an ant-sized dog or a whale sized dogs? Still pretty impressive intra-species size disparity. Not bad for a few thousand years of selective breeding and a weird choice of example for Knownothingland’s already bogus claim in my view
.* Heard about the Chihuahua that had it off with a Great Dane? Apparently his mates put him up to it!
@ birgerjohansson : “For those who are interested, Youtube has quite a few videos about the earliest era of the Earth, aka the Hadean.”
This one by PaleoAnalysis on the Hadean is one of my faves – or at least the start of one of my fave youtube series here. Although it really only properly starts at the 3 minutes 53 seconds mark. (Not quote 9 minutes long in total.)
On the free will argument, I recently read Determined by Sapolsky, who (imo) makes a persuasive case against the existence of free will while simultaneously pretty much concedes that we inevitably live much or all of our lives believing that we have it. Btw, not only is it a persuasive book, but it’s eminently readable to boot.
The patriarchy is fantastic… if you’re a straight, cis man. It sucks balls for everyone else.
I guess one of the advantages of the patriarchy is that you become convinced that arguments from authority work. Wait, that’s not an advantage.
Also PaleoAnalysis’es discussion of the very start of life really happens here in the Archean Eon clip the second in that fave series of mine. 12 mins & 45 secs long.
An English teacher unencumbered by any regard for punctuation too it seems…
gardengnome @ # 26 – I think we can blame the punctuation, capitalization, etc, on the transcription software (otherwise pretty damn good, actually). For putting those words in that order, however, Knowland has nobody but himself to blame.
@20 not how encoding and decoding of data in DNA works.
Sequences are used to react with a reader in a way that is interpreted as a letter, not individual amino acids.
Some people don’t grok the distinction between analogue and digital.
Reginald Selkirk@20–
They created their own DNA code. They converted the CGAT quaternery to computer binary and used that to encode ‘HELLO’ in 5 bytes of ASCII. This is inefficient but allows for robust error checking. Note that while this system can encode a lot of information in a very small mass, it is very slow to read and write, and extremely prone to error: ‘Nanopore sequencing yielded 3469 reads, 1973 of which aligned to our adapter sequence. Of the aligned sequences, 30 had extractable payload regions. Of those, 1 was successfully decoded with a perfect payload. The remaining 29 payloads were rejected by the decoder for being irrecoverably corrupt.’
They didn’t have to use binary. I used a similar principle with a code sheet for English for the 64 possible codon triplets for a short story which came out almost simultaneously with a published paper that reported the same idea but added actual implementation. That paper was originally a school science fair project that impressed one of the judges so much that he realised the concept (they even mailed themselves the sample and then decoded it) and co-authored the paper with the student.
oops…’quaternary’
I’m all in favour of dissing Eton for its role in perpetuating British class and gender privileges, but let’s remember that in this case Knowland was dismissed by Eton because of his videos. That is, his regressively patriarchal cheerleading was too much even for the regressively patriarchal Eton.
Imagine being so confidently ignorant that you think that is a solid refutation of anything. The mind boggles. My opinion of the scholarship at Eton continues to remain low.
Yes, they kicked this numpty out, but how long was he inflicting this level of ignorance upon students before he got the boot?
Oh, if only that were the standard!
There are worse teachers than this guy out in the world, I’m sorry to say.
Eton? “Public scool” for the aristocracy?
Trigger warning ! The brother of princess Diana was sexually and physically abused in one of those.
“Boarding schools have a devastating impact on society, says Charles Spencer” | Private schools | The Guardian
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education/2024/mar/17/boarding-schools-impact-charles-spencer
@36
…so Knowland fits well into a destructive heritage of people who permanently mess up the young generation, even if he is not one of the most toxic ones.
BTW New Scientist has a recurring page about “nominative determinism”. ‘Knowland’ seems like an example of the direct opposite. Imagine Trump was named Donald Honestboy.
I disagree – it’s rubbish for the majority of straight, cis men too.
For proper nominative determinism he should be named Will Ignorance.
@Dunc #39,
Yup. The patriarchy is designed to serve the patriarch. Other men are useful tools at best, competition at worst.
Most conservative men believe that they’ll be a patriarch one day, just you wait, but there are a lot more applicants than open positions.
The classic patriarchial societies in the USA are the various Mormon polygamous cults. They are disasters for all but a few people who live in them.
In polygamous sects, there are too many men for too few wives. Not every male is going to be able to have multiple wives.
So, the patriarchs kick a lot of young men out to fix the sex ratio.
These are older children and young men without much in the way of life skills and not familiar with the modern world around them.
The numbers are in the hundreds to maybe a thousand.
“Clearly you don’t need a whole massive 3mm long penis to successfully reproduce, as he should know since he has 7 children.”
Good one! Although, it’s just wrong to make fun of someone’s incredibly tiny penis.
It is clearly a perfectly adequate penis, no matter what its size, given that he has successfully reproduced.
@PZ: Okay, so no need for the “Size doesn’t matter” talk. : )
PZ Myers @ # 44: … he has successfully reproduced.
We know with fair confidence that his wife has successfully reproduced, but [cit
DNA Test certification needed] to establish the same for her husband…