It would not be easy to overestimate the impact of evolution. It is probably the most influential idea in the history of modern science. In addition to science, Darwin's legacy persists in medicine, education, media, law, public policy and of course religion. All of this highlights the enormous responsibility shouldered by life scientists. Their scientific opinion makes a difference far outside their daily circles. They can shed light or allow ignorance to fester in a wide range of fields. Unfortunately too many misrepresent science, or more often simply look the other way while the science is twisted. The result is increasing levels of ignorance. Consider this message I received:There is nothing religious about evolution. It is a fact. It has been proven time and time again, in every medium currently available to science. Predictions based upon existing species, the fossil record, microbiology, genetics, observable behaviors, physical characteristics etc... are always proven to jibe with the process of evolution through random mutation, heritability, and natural selection. No evidence has ever arisen that can falsify the truth of evolution. That is why it is AGAINST THE LAW in this country to teach creationism, intelligent design, or any other religious nonsense in our public schools. No REAL scientist doubts the fact of evolution by natural selection. You sir, occupy a lonely place in the world of those who have been trained in the sciences. You are truly a member of the lunatic fringe. Your motivation is obviously NOT rooted in the pursuit of true knowledge for the betterment of the human race. You have chosen to waste your one lifetime advancing pseudo-scientific nonsense, which is truly quite sad. I do pity you, and hope that someday you may choose to do something useful with your life.
That message should alarm life scientists everywhere. This is where their misrepresentations have led. My critic's sentiment is certainly understandable. Every textbook, biology class, TV special, interview and popular magazine article on the subject sends the same false message. Evolution is a fact, there is no contradictory evidence, and those who agree are anti science. This is Darwin's pathetic legacy, and it is vigorously promoted by the life sciences today. From Dawkins and Coyne to Miller and Collins, evolutionists carry an enormous burden.
Darwinism is not the only false pseudo-scientific doctrine that is taught in our schools and placed on a pedestal. Science is riddled with fundamentally false teachings. Paul Feyerabend wrote in 'Against Method' that "the most stupid procedures and the most laughable results in their domain are surrounded with an aura of excellence." Unfortunately, there is not much you and I can do about it. The time when the false gods of this world are overthrown has yet not arrived. But it won't be much longer.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing religious about evolution.
ReplyDeleteThe conclusion is based on scientific investigation, not religion.
It is a fact.
In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." So, yes.
It has been proven time and time again, in every medium currently available to science. Predictions based upon existing species, the fossil record, microbiology, genetics, observable behaviors, physical characteristics etc... are always proven to jibe with the process of evolution through random mutation, heritability, and natural selection.
Scientifically verified is a better term, but considering the strength of the evidence, "prove" is reasonable.
This is just not very interesting any more.
ReplyDeleteComparative genomics data is obvious.
"fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." So, yes.
ReplyDeleteIf I do not beleive the monkeys ancester rafted from africa to southamerica, am I perverse?
Blas: If I do not beleive the monkeys ancester rafted from africa to southamerica, am I perverse?
ReplyDeleteIt's perverse to ignore the vast bulk of the evidence. Though an island raft is a plausible scenario (they do occur), you are free to propose another mechanism that is also consistent with the scientific evidence.
Dr. Hunter, is there an e-mail you wouldn't mind people contacting you at?
ReplyDeleteI can't help but think of the wasted time and flagrant misdirection in the field of neuroscience alone. U.C.L.A. Neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz (http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=41) in his book The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force (http://books.google.com/books?id=5RlDm8d_2AsC, p.31) discusses the professional pressure to conform to physicalism and naturalism:
ReplyDelete"[the materialist worldview] has emerged so triumphant that to suggest humbly that there might be more to mental life than action potentials zipping along axons is to risk being branded a scientific naif. Even worse, it is to be branded nonscientific. When, in 1997, I made just this suggestion over dinner to a former president of the Society for Neuroscience, he exclaimed, 'Well, then you are not a scientist.' Questioning whether consciousness, emotions, thoughts, the subjective feeling of pain, and the spark of creativity arise from nothing but the electromechanical activity of large collections of neuronal circuits is a good way to get dismissed as a hopeless dualist. Ah, that dreaded label."
Pages 141-142 are also interesting.
Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D., is a research professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLarry:
ReplyDelete====
I hope that message was not sent by someone doing professional work in a legitimate science capacity. Of course, a rant from the gallery is nothing surprising on the interwebz:
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Well the point of the post was that this type of thinking is where evolution has led. I would not have used that message if it were from an anomymous source. The source is not a scientist, but from a responsible person who has been influenced by evolutionary thinking. In fact, I hear the same types of claims from biology professors, so the point is that you can hardly blame the writer of that message. Evolutionists have misrepresented science rather badly.
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The points are very clear:
(1) Darwin = bad.
(2) Darwinism = religion (unacknowledged)
(3) Religion (acknowledged) = good
(4) Evolution/evolutionists = bad
(5) Not evolution = ???
(6) The way forward = ???
(7) Climate change = Darwinism/Evolution
(8) Sarah Palin = YES!
Anything missing?
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Truth seems to be the main missing ingredient to this typical evoluionary reaction.
(1) False. Why is evolutionists make things up so often?
(2) Unacknowledged? Hilarious, It is fully documented (by evolutionists no less).
(3) Absurd. Larry, where do you come up with this stuff? I criticize your religious mandates, and you invert it.
(4) No, remember its the skeptics that are bad. This is the usual projection. Evolutionists call us bad, then blame us for calling them bad.
(5) Empiricism (or are you still not actually reading what you are criticizing).
(6) Empiricism (or are you still not actually reading what you are criticizing).
(7) You've got to be kidding me. Just make anything up you like Larry, and then spray it around.
(8) Unbelievable.
The evolutionist is good at spotting "a rant from the gallery" which is really nothing more than someone rehearsing what evolutionists have been saying, and then the evolution doubles down with a true rant.
Are we at all surprised by messages such as the on in the OP?
Larry:
ReplyDelete"Religion drives this blog"
How so? (please be specific)
prafrige:
ReplyDelete====
This is just not very interesting any more.
Comparative genomics data is obvious.
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More rationalism.
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ReplyDeleteprafrige said...
This is just not very interesting any more.
Comparative genomics data is obvious.
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This is what drives me crazy. You conclusion is just so grossly illogical. Here it is in a nutshell.
Fact: some chimpanzee and human genetics are nearly identical
Conclusion: NeoDarwinism (with all it's convoluted explanations and obvious conflicting data) is a fact.
This kind of reasoning would never be tolerated in any other field (with perhaps the exception of climate science). Obviously you have not been following Dr. Hunters arguments with an open mind or you would not have posted something so ill-informed and irrelevant.
Congratulations, a Camp Quest representative came along and said the things you wanted him to say. Surely, that was worthy of its own thread.
ReplyDeleteFrom their web site...
"Camp Quest of Michigan Inc. is an independent non-profit corporation organized exclusively for educational, recreational, scientific, literary, and historical purposes, to foster in children an appreciation for the natural world, to stress individual dignity, self-worth and capacity for self-realization through reason and naturalistic principles, and to reinforce non-theistic foundations for ethics and morality, in a resident summer camp environment. Camp Quest is the first secular residential summer camp for the children of atheists, agnostics, humanists and freethinkers."
http://michigan.camp-quest.org/
Apparently, Camp Director Jeff Duncan doesn't consider humanism to be a religion but maintains his beliefs are "a fact".
Do you think I would have trouble finding a Christian who maintains, as a fact, Jesus was the son of God who rose from the dead? Heck, I could probably find one who maintains Jesus IS God as an undeniable FACT.
To mimic Blas...
"If I do not believe Jesus was anything more than just a man, am I perverse?"
As for the appearance of New World Monkeys, what is your counter explanation? Or is this also a subject not to be explored?
I found a reasonable sounding explanation for the appearance of New World Monkeys. Do you want to hear it?
"If I do not believe Jesus was anything more than just a man, am I perverse?"
ReplyDeleteOff course not.
I do not have a counter explanation and I´m not in a position to explore alternatives, but I will reduce the chance that common ancestor is true and definitivly is not a fact.
Yes, I´m glad to hear reasonable explanations.
Hi Blas,
ReplyDeleteIf I am understanding your sentiment correctly my equivalent would be to suggest that until the Orthodox Catholic church and the Roman Catholic church resolve their differences and reunite it will reduce the chance that [Jesus’ divinity] is true and definitely is not a fact.
Just as the issues surrounding the East-West Schism are relatively subtle compared to the general agreement of parties involved, the issues surrounding the New World Monkeys is only a subtle problem for those who are in general agreement on Common Descent and mainstream evolution.
Blas, why aren't you challenging an idea that Possum ancestors had to raft from Australia to South America?
Because the Possum ancestors could walk...
"Estimates of the rate of divergence among marsupial genomes suggest that the Dromiciops-Diprotodontia split occurred ~=50 million years ago, well after the establishment of the major clades of marsupials but before deep oceanic barriers prohibited dispersal among Australia, Antarctica, and South America."
http://www.pnas.org/content/88/23/10465.full.pdf
For the existence of the New World Monkeys to be a problem for you but Possums aren't, you pretty much have to accept scientists can estimate of the rate of divergence in genomes which depends of an assumption that common descent is true.
If you presume scientists can’t accurately estimate rates of divergence then the New World Monkeys are no more a mystery than anything else.
However, I promised you a hypothesis so I will give you one even if it is likely to be dismissed as a just-so story.
“On conclusion, if an African origin for the South American platyrrhines is admitted, the issue of how they made the journey remains to be clarified. The problem is that a transatlantic journey from Africa to South America is not an easy feat for primates. It is recognized that, in spite the overall unaltered disposition of continental land masses, several drastic climate changes marked the Eocene-Oligocene boundary (Ivany, Patterson, and Lohmann 2000). These changes also include variation in global temperatures that may have affected sea level. In this scenario, South Atlantic Ocean ridges such as the Sierra Leone Rise and the Walvis Ridge could have become exposed as islands, creating pathways that, in conjunction with favorable water and wind currents, enabled faunal migration to the isolated South America (Houle 1999).
Indeed, other mammals have also supposedly invaded the South American continent from Africa, such as New World caviomorph rodents that suddenly appeared in the South American fossil record at approximately the same time the platyrrhines did (Wyss et al. 1993). Interestingly, these mammals, as NWM do, also have a sister taxon relationship with African groups, the phiomorph rodents (Mouchaty et al. 2001). Then, the existence of a faunal connection between Africa and South America in the Eocene/Oligocene transition is further corroborated.”
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/20/10/1620
Thought, have you ever see a monkey jumping to the sea and swimming to an island? Do you really belive it happened? With the certainity to call it a fact?
ReplyDeleteNote to self: Never read another Larry Tanner post.
ReplyDeleteCornelius Hunter -
ReplyDeleteSincere apologies for yesterday's overly snarky post.
Larry:
ReplyDelete"Sincere apologies for yesterday's overly snarky post."
Apology accepted, thank you and take care Larry!