This is so freaking wrong!

[skib]

They have every right to expect censorship of their pseudoscientific ideas, because they're wrong.

(Before I contribute, allow me to clarify that I think I am understanding everything happening in this conversation. I may not be. )

I'm feeling the itch to play devil's advocate here. Who gets to decide what definition of 'wrong' we go by? By our definition (though I am in agreement with you Babbalanja,) they are wrong. But are they wrong in their own sense? Essentially, do they think they are preaching a load of BS or do they believe in what they are saying?

[Babbalanja]

Essentially, do they think they are preaching a load of BS or do they believe in what they are saying?

As with cold readers and conspiracy theorists, I don't think the question ever occurs to believers in creationism. They don't arrive at such a belief through rational inquiry. They feel they should believe it, so they profess belief in it. How would we know whether they actually believe species don't evolve, or any of the other bizarre things religion teaches?

The more they profess belief in the belief, the easier it gets to deny reality.

Regards,

Istvan

[kiki1982]

How... odd...

It seems rather strange to encounter a copy of Origin with a creationist preface... I really don't see how that helps their cause.

Speaking as someone who is both a committed Christian and an ardent believer in evolution (the two are not mutually exclusive!), I think its all a bit daft really. I find over-zealous evangelicals and militant aetheists equally distasteful, though that is only my opinion.

Their argument about creation resembling a book is rather telling: if they applied it logically to the Bible, they would see that as a text it has had numerous authors, revisions, cuts, changes, edits and reinterpretations; it did not just come together. If the theory of evolution is fallible by that logic, then so is the Bible. I believe the Bible is a holy book written by people who were inspired by God, but ultimately it is still written by flawed, imperfect human beings who as often as not got things wrong. Attempting to censor any view of our world, either spiritually or scientifically, limits us intellectually as a species.

I so agree with this. I was raised in a Catholic family and went to a Catholic school and neither of them ever even brought up the idea of creationism. Apart from the older familymembers of course... Either way, they never tried to make others believe it. They just never spoke about it and if the topic came up everyone seemed rather happier to believe Darwin than the 6 days...

Creationism was something for RE, not for the biology or geography class...

Sadly, there seem to be people who seem to think that it's either the one or the other, as if there is nothing in between. Even the pope came to terms with the theory some time ago... but then again, evangelicals are protestants aren't they.

I don't think it should be taught in schools. It is bad enough if children get fed it at home that teachers (a position of academic authority) should not have the same opinion. Though maybe Darwin's theory should not be handed to students as a fact, but rather as a scientific theory that is not yet totally proven but which there is more than adequate proof to believe that it is right. Although still a lot should be found to factually prove it. Without hypothesis no research/experiment.

Not that of course creationists will ever accept Darwin's theory, even when it is proven. I still remember the baffling disappointment and disbelief of my brother-in-law, a raging Jehova's Witness elder: 'oh, no, you are not Darwinists are you!' when he was trying to convert my husband and me (something which he has tried several time ruining our evening). It is the same as the Titanic that never sank. It is true, the Titanic sank, but it is not true, although there is clear scientific proof how it sank and factual proof (the ship is on the seabed).

Censûre is rather impossible of course. You can never control the thoughts of people, but you can at least beware that children do not get fully indoctrinated from the start. It is utterly dangerous to have that in a society. Essentially it would be going back to the days before Darwin...

[Babbalanja]

You can never control the thoughts of people, but you can at least beware that children do not get fully indoctrinated from the start. It is utterly dangerous to have that in a society. Essentially it would be going back to the days before Darwin...

You said it.

Darwin's theory is crucial to efforts in the 21st century to battle disease in both humans and their food sources, as well as preserving biodiversity. The fact that people are trying to scrap the evolutionary construct and the notion of shared ancestry of all life on Earth on religious grounds should be an outrage to believers and nonbelievers alike.

I keep saying pseudoscience is a very dangerous thing. I shudder to think what could happen before we wise up and stop this nonsense.

Regards,

Istvan

[OrphanPip]

I don't think it should be taught in schools. It is bad enough if children get fed it at home that teachers (a position of academic authority) should not have the same opinion. Though maybe Darwin's theory should not be handed to students as a fact, but rather as a scientific theory that is not yet totally proven but which there is more than adequate proof to believe that it is right. Although still a lot should be found to factually prove it. Without hypothesis no research/experiment.

Technically this is impossible, the way the scientific method works is that a theory is never proven. The theory of gravity is unproven, in fact we don't even really know why or how gravity exists, we just notice that it exists. Yet, it is incredibly rare for anyone to doubt the existence of gravity.

I've always been mindboggled by the focus of creationist on Origins, this text is groundbreaking but incredibly outdated. Darwin was wrong about the majority of what is in that book, but he was right about natural selection and he provided some good standard examples. Darwin was wrong about his theory of abiogenesis, the primordial soup one, and he wasn't aware of genetics. Today the evolutionary theory has incorporated Mendelian genetics, population genetics, Darwinian natural selection (including sexual selection), later theories of selection (Kin-selection), theories of "macroevolution" by people like Gould (punctuated equilibrium), molecular biology (provided the proof that DNA does change!), and finally bioinformatics (phylogenetics, comparison of structural homology). The modern evolutionary theory is so much more than Darwin, yet creationist never seem to be able to move beyond that.

[Katharinestar]

Thousands of people were lobotomized in the days before people expected testing to find out the long-term effects of such so-called miracle cures. Look up the name Lysenko: this guy sold the Soviets an anti-Darwinian biological hoax that deep sixed their agricultural program and starved millions.
Istvan

I've got a few questions after I read your post. Is lobotomy completely banned around the world? Are Darwin's theories based on science, or on some of his conjectures made by doing some experiments that imitated nature?
Lobotomy damages a brain right and there in the surgery. It does not take time to have harmful effects.

[Lynne50]

Even the pope came to terms with the theory some time ago... but then again, evangelicals are protestants aren't they.



...

I don't think you have to be an evangelical to be a protestant or vice versa. According to Webster's dictionary, a protestant is a person who does not believe in the universal authority of the Pope. I am a Christian, but I would not call myself an evangelical. Again, according to Webster's, an evangelical is one who is marked by militant or crusading zeal. I think it is in that context that I disagree with evangelicals.
I do agree with you when you say that creationism should be taught in religion class and NOT in biology. We can't take steps back in our education.
I am a Christian and have no trouble believing in Darwin's 'theories'.

[kiki1982]

I don't think you have to be an evangelical to be a protestant or vice versa. According to Webster's dictionary, a protestant is a person who does not believe in the universal authority of the Pope. I am a Christian, but I would not call myself an evangelical. Again, according to Webster's, an evangelical is one who is marked by militant or crusading zeal. I think it is in that context that I disagree with evangelicals.
I do agree with you when you say that creationism should be taught in religion class and NOT in biology. We can't take steps back in our education.
I am a Christian and have no trouble believing in Darwin's 'theories'.

I understand you, but I think you misunderstood me... I meant to say that even the pope (suposedly a rampant and raging traditionalist) came to terms with Darwin and his spin-offs. But, evangelical Christians have no connection to the pope... Nothing against protestants. At any rate, there are Catholics who keep believing in creationism too.

@OrphanPip:

The gravity-theory is proven in the sense that the weight of something on Mars is not the same as the the weight of the same thing on Earth. How else can this be if there is no gravity? It all depends on the ability of a planet to attract something to its surface and how much. Less means that something is less heavy, more means that it will be heavier. How is that then not proven?

Darwin was the base for all those other approaches that (partly) proved Darwin wrong or combining them, gave proof to both. The significance of Mendel was not noticed until the 20ieth century, but still, combining those two papers, it disproved in part Darwin's somewhat naive 'survival of the fittest' (recessive genes are not in existence here), but proved evolution it itself to be realistic.

[OrphanPip]

@OrphanPip:

The gravity-theory is proven in the sense that the weight of something on Mars is not the same as the the weight of the same thing on Earth. How else can this be if there is no gravity? It all depends on the ability of a planet to attract something to its surface and how much. Less means that something is less heavy, more means that it will be heavier. How is that then not proven?

Darwin was the base for all those other approaches that (partly) proved Darwin wrong or combining them, gave proof to both. The significance of Mendel was not noticed until the 20ieth century, but still, combining those two papers, it disproved in part Darwin's somewhat naive 'survival of the fittest' (recessive genes are not in existence here), but proved evolution it itself to be realistic.

It is how the scientific method functions, nothing is ever proven. The best theory is the one that explains the most, while remaining falsifiable and not disproved. The use of the word theory in science is not the same as the colloquial sense of the word:

A theory, in the scientific sense of the word, is an analytic structure designed to explain a set of empirical observations. A scientific theory does two things:

1. it identifies this set of distinct observations as a class of phenomena, and
2. makes assertions about the underlying reality that brings about or affects this class.

In the scientific or empirical tradition, the term "theory" is reserved for ideas which meet baseline requirements about the kinds of empirical observations made, the methods of classification used, and the consistency of the theory in its application among members of the class to which it pertains. These requirements vary across different scientific fields of knowledge, but in general theories are expected to be functional and parsimonious: i.e. a theory should be the simplest possible tool that can be used to effectively address the given class of phenomena.

The theory of gravity doesn't mean that gravity exist, it is evident that both evolution and gravity exist to anyone with eyes, but is the framework by which we explain and make predictions about gravity. As to gravity, the current theory of gravity is inadequate for predicting gravitational forces at the quantum level, so it is hardly even a complete theory.

In science nothing is ever proven, nothing is ever known completely. Your theory is either supported or disproved, never proven.

[kiki1982]

Still, is it because we as humans have still too much to research, that we hve to leave our children in the dark and attribue everything to God? I think that's highly dangerous.

The most important things is that children know that soe of this might not be totally right, as it isn't proven, yet some of it clear. Refuting all because somethings are not explained yet is just opportunistic.

[loki456]

ok I like this post, indeed interesting.
I was raised in a christian home, attended medical school and now have a view on the two together.

I hate the science vs religion debate, it makes no sense to me. if science is the study of the natural world, how can it possible prove the existence of a god/s. also, if there is a God how can he/she/it/them be expected to be proven to exist be science? if you think about it, if god exists, science just shows god's logical nature.

now the theory of 'survival of the fittest' being one of Darwin's more brilliant postulations is not absurd, the religious fanatics who won't listen to reason cause they hear the word 'darwin' and automatically go into a fit of illogical ranting, astounds me. I was schooled in a christian school. OH NO!! don't listen to Loki, he's been tainted. the truth is, I had a teacher who taught me the value of free thinking. why couldn't the world have been created out of a big bang? why is natural selection wrong - considering we see it everywhere, the examples are undeniable? why does every thought man have considering the creation of the world, make religious fanatics go into a tail spin?

my mother having been on this free thinking train herself and a devout christian, not only made me read the bible over and over, but fed me Aristotle, plato, bosanquet, kant, and at med school, galen, hippocratese, harvey and the list goes on. I'm not just some stupid piece of trailer trash who decided a god existed because, 'well what the hell, my speech impediment must be supernatural, so there has to be a god right?' (i don't have a speech impediment by the way - just my australian look at the stereotypical trailer trash).

I think there are fanatics on each side, that won't take the time to listen, evaluate and act accordingly. they are so wrapped up in what they believe, they don't want to even consider there is something different. why do you think they destroy the preface of 'origins', why do you think they come out and publicly announce 'without a doubt' that religion is wrong, without having the proof to back it up - see my intro.

science has much to offer, and has much to learn (i have to believe this, i'm doctor after all). but I also believe religion has its place, it also has much to offer and whether you believe it has more or less to offer is a determinant of your ignorance.

[The Comedian]

Seriously -- this is not a religion/science issue (yawn). It's a free speech issue. If this group wants to put their little preface to The Origin of Species, fine. Just fine. And if anyone else wants to write a little diatribe about great social dangers of believing in God (gods) in a preface to the Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita. . .fine. . .. and then pass it around to unsuspecting college students who are trained to wield their critical thinking skills in a world full of competing ideas, then, well, super. Write that little thing of yours. Give it to those kids. Create a little danger. Cause a stir. Make people post about it on internet forums.

Yee haw!

[loki456]

Seriously -- this is not a religion/science issue (yawn). It's a free speech issue. If this group wants to put their little preface to The Origin of Species, fine. Just fine. And if anyone else wants to write a little diatribe about great social dangers of believing in God (gods) in a preface to the Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita. . .fine. . .. and then pass it around to unsuspecting college students who are trained to wield their critical thinking skills in a world full of competing ideas, then, well, super. Write that little thing of yours. Give it to those kids. Create a little danger. Cause a stir. Make people post about it on internet forums.

Yee haw!

hahaha.... you have definitely made a wise point, oh yoda-san.

[DanielBenoit]

Give it to those kids. Create a little danger. Cause a stir. Make people post about it on internet forums.

Yee haw!

Yeah exactly, the world would be too boring if there was no controversy.

[Virgil]

Seriously -- this is not a religion/science issue (yawn). It's a free speech issue. If this group wants to put their little preface to The Origin of Species, fine. Just fine. And if anyone else wants to write a little diatribe about great social dangers of believing in God (gods) in a preface to the Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita. . .fine. . .. and then pass it around to unsuspecting college students who are trained to wield their critical thinking skills in a world full of competing ideas, then, well, super. Write that little thing of yours. Give it to those kids. Create a little danger. Cause a stir. Make people post about it on internet forums.

Yee haw!

I agree. It's their money that they're spending. You can take it and throw it away.

I love your last bit there.