Found while searching for moving goalposts...
Posted on 04/19/2006 3:57:51 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
A new article in PLoS Biology (April 18, 2006) discusses the state of scientific literacy in the United States, with especial attention to the survey research of Jon D. Miller, who directs the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University Medical School.
To measure public acceptance of the concept of evolution, Miller has been asking adults if "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals" since 1985. He and his colleagues purposefully avoid using the now politically charged word "evolution" in order to determine whether people accept the basics of evolutionary theory. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of Americans who reject this concept has declined (from 48% to 39%), as has the proportion who accept it (45% to 40%). Confusion, on the other hand, has increased considerably, with those expressing uncertainty increasing from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005.In international surveys, the article reports, "[n]o other country has so many people who are absolutely committed to rejecting the concept of evolution," quoting Miller as saying, "We are truly out on a limb by ourselves."
The "partisan takeover" of the title refers to the embrace of antievolutionism by what the article describes as "the right-wing fundamentalist faction of the Republican Party," noting, "In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Missouri, and Texas all included demands for teaching creation science." NCSE is currently aware of eight state Republican parties that have antievolutionism embedded in their official platforms or policies: those of Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas. Four of them -- those of Alaska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas -- call for teaching forms of creationism in addition to evolution; the remaining three call only for referring the decision whether to teach such "alternatives" to local school districts.
A sidebar to the article, entitled "Evolution under Attack," discusses the role of NCSE and its executive director Eugenie C. Scott in defending the teaching of evolution. Scott explained the current spate of antievolution activity as due in part to the rise of state science standards: "for the first time in many states, school districts are faced with the prospect of needing to teach evolution. ... If you don't want evolution to be taught, you need to attack the standards." Commenting on the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover [Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al.], Scott told PLoS Biology, "Intelligent design may be dead as a legal strategy but that does not mean it is dead as a popular social movement," urging and educators to continue to resist to the onslaught of the antievolution movement. "It's got legs," she quipped. "It will evolve."
The designer must have some attributes or methods or goals, or it's a completely empty hypothesis. Fine for your belief system, but completely outside the purview of science.
Yuppers! For example, Without QM we would not be talking this way.
Maybe George Bernard Shaw, despite his socialism, was right when he noted that "England and America are two countries divided by a common language." :-)
Post 111: evolution is an unproven theory
Post 124: evolutionists have only proven one theory
Those posts are just over 15 minutes apart. Do YOU know what you believe?
What do you make of the fact that the spread of the damage in this gene and others matches the expectations of common descent? This earlier optimal design damaged identically across several species implies common ancestory of all primates. That's the whole point. Again and again such molecular evidence meets the expectations of common descent, and were common descent not true there would be no reason for it to.
Aha, the Lord has delivered them unto our hands. Evolution is demanded in this case: the presence of inky quills proves descent from a common ancestor.
Mathematics is replete with eternal truths.
Science is not science unless it can be wrong.
Stories cannot be wrong, they can only be bad.
A scientist invests in a position, a hyposthesis, only to find it's garbage. Hence, "cruel." Which is why, in some cases, you have to be careful of what a scientist says. His hypothesis is sometimes his baby and he wants to protect it. That's why reproducibilty is so important.
Nobody ever said moving the goalpost was easy ... Or quick.
If the process is broken, and useless, why are these genes still around, in Darwinian terms?
why should we not infer that Alice was once capable of baking a cake too?
Whether Alice was once capable of baking a cake or not says nothing about whether she is related to Bob and Carol.
Cordially,
Not necessarily. It could imply common design rather than common ancestory.
Cordially,
Plausible is not a bad thing in stories, though. Life would be very bland without those stories, but one ought to be careful of how much one invests in them. I find the argument for the relationship between species (the DNA record, the fossil record is not so persuasive), but the argument from past to present is far harder to make than from present to past.
And evo-doubters will have their place at the political table. To try to exclude them from the argument will impact unfortunately on your freedom.
In what way is it false? Surely you must have an equal or better explanation for the sorting we see in the fossil record.
" Were it to have been true, evolutionists themselves would not have had to put forth hopeful monster theories to explain their contents.
Hopeful monster? Which hopeful monster theory are you referring to? I hope you don't believe saltation events are necessary for evolution or that Punctuated Equilibrium requires that sort of rapid change.
" Furthermore, your interpretation of the fossil beds hinges on the assumption that geologically, gradualism trumps catastrophism.
Interpretation of the fossil record is based on gradualism punctuated with local catastrophes. The reason catastrophism is not seriously considered for all records is because of the evidence, *including the sorting of fossils*, found. A *single* catastrophic event would lead to completely different sorting orders. The sorting we do find heavily indicates gradual deposition interspersed with catastrophes of varying degree. A single catastrophe would also leave evidence of its passing in *many* other geological structures independent of the fossil record. This is simply not found, the evidences of catastrophic events are inconsistent both geographically and temporally. They simply did not occur simultaneously.
"What really needs to happen if evolution is to take a rightful place at the table of empirical science is for endosymbiotic activity involving prokaryotes to be observed under the microscope"
Why?
Let's try a little mental exercise.
Suppose that ~3.6 billion years ago, the Earth was populated by small Achaean prokaryotes who were quite happy and doing swimmingly in their environment. At that time there was a small band of aliens flying about the galaxy looking for trouble to stir up. They came upon Earth with its families of tiny archaea and being the artists they were, decided to expand the archaean horizon by introducing mitosomes to the archaeans thus producing diplomonads. Or perhaps they chose some other early eukaryote to produce, which one they chose is irrelevant. What is important is that they produced the eukaryote from which all Earthly eukaryotic life descended.
Those aliens promptly left, never to return. In fact no other alien species of any sort ever visited Earth again.
Now, how does this origin of eukaryotes change abiogenesis? How does it change common descent? How does it change speciation? How does it change hominid development?
How does this affect any of evolution, other than that one instance?
Maybe I should knock someone up.
____________
Well, gravity is just a theory, after all.
Found while searching for moving goalposts...
I can dig it. Isn't that what Dembski is driving at in his work - some way of getting at or describing "eternal truths" mathematically, in his case regarding "design"?
What formatting?
The process that caused the rise of the Appalachian Mountains ended long ago. Why are they still around? Because there hasn't been enough time for them to erode away yet.
The breakage was relatively recent, in evolutionary terms. Plus, there's not much penalty for carrying them around, even if they don't work.
Whether Alice was once capable of baking a cake or not says nothing about whether she is related to Bob and Carol.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. The commonality of those genes is but one tiny pebble in the entire mountain of evidence for common descent. It "says nothing" only as long as you can manage to studiously ignore the big picture.
Bite me! We got enough baggage without you piling on!
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