Posted on 03/17/2014 11:17:25 AM PDT by EveningStar
Last night, I watched the second episode of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" (the reboot of the 1980 series). It was entitled, "Some of the Things That Molecules Do."
One of the things Tyson dealt with in this episode was evolution.
Now, I myself do subscribe to the theory of evolution, but I found Tyson's treatment to be offensive, condescending, and smarmy.
I thought it was an in-your-face chip-on-the-shoulder response against skeptics of evolution.
I thought this was supposed to be a science show, not a political show.
But this is just my opinion. What is your opinion?
If you missed the episode and wish to see it, it will replay on the National Geographic Channel. You can also watch it online at Fox and Hulu.
How would being condescending to creationists make it political? That's still a scientific subject.
It turns them into a sort of exclusive priesthood, something which I thought was a “damnable” feature of “religion.”
Part of it is how the attempts to prognosticate on short term climate changes have been carried out. They are trying to solve for more variables than they have equations, and the older, more cautious breed of scientist would tell them not to undertake this fool’s errand, but they undertake it anyhow.
Saying we don’t know, can’t know now or may never know the answer is not the same as ignoring the question. The “quest for truth” has to be based on what can be proven.
Sciences don’t exist in vacuums. But sometimes those who purport to use them, suck (ok, pun intended).
Relationships with God can be proven. However they don’t turn the contents of test tubes green upon demand so they get scoffed at by the worldly set.
They don't mean what you think they mean.
Certainly, but that doesn’t answer the question.
Short answer: Radioactive decay (e.g., Radium -> Radon -> Lead).
Even so-called "stable" elements actually have extremely long halflives. Eventually (in trillions or even quadrillions of years) all atoms heavier (with an atomic number higher) than iron will decay into iron.
But no, I wouldn't call that "evolution."
Regards,
It shows the taint of what we already have seen is political. If your dog smells like skunk, you generally infer that he’s messed with a skunk.
“IT all depends on your starting point.”
My BIL thinks the starting point was 6,000 years ago.
Yes, it is, because those things are not what is being claimed.
You might like what Sultan Knish (Daniel Greenfield) has to say about Tyson...and the left in general.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-left-is-too-smart-to-fail.html
I had seen DeGrasse Tyson on some other science shows and I have to agree completely with the Sultan about him being a mediocrity. He’s the result of the same american sickness that has given us Maya Angelou as poet laureate and Obama as president. Affirmative action anyone?
But regarding evolution... I was pretty much a believer until I ran into a book a few months ago called “Darwin’s Doubt”. It was truly an eye opener. Stephen Meyer totally dismantles the theory from many different scientific angles. At the end he makes a case for intelligent design, but presented no evidence other than through inference, but was not convincing enough for me, though it definitely raised the possibility.
So right now I’m in limboland - I no longer believe that life evolved Darwin’s way, (though I believe microevolution does occur), and there’s not enough evidence for intelligent design either, so I’m waiting for the evolution of the next theory.
Huh? The allegation was that being condescending to people that reject evolution was political. I asked how that is political. No context or references to other things we’ve seen are implied by the question.
“Just a rehash of older stuff, Sagan did it better.”
I think so truly. Better than the Cosmos episodes was his thought-provoking “Intelligent Life in the Universe book”
Interesting.
The problem with subscribing to evolution is that you have to dismiss the words of Christ. Evolution teaches that man is a recent arrival upon the earth, compared with all other life forms. But Jesus affirmed that God made man “in the beginning.”
Also, if you believe evolution, you believe in eons of bloodshed and death before man ever showed up. Yet Genesis says there was no suffering nor death until created Man chose to disobey God.
So the "scientists" just call people names when those people express skepticism.
Science is in process of being ruined by progressivism.
Political, that is an academic question perhaps, but it certainly reflects arrogance, as if the physical sciences were the oracle of all tangible reality.
Sciences are wonderful servants. They are hideous masters.
“I must ask, can molecules “evolve”? I know they can decay and, even subsequently return to their natural state but, can Lead (Pb) become Gold (Au)?”
Lead and gold are elements, not molecules.
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