Eden and Evolution

The Washington Post ^ | February 5, 2005 | Shankar Vedantam

[CobaltBlue]

Ricky Nguyen and Mariama Lowe never really believed in evolution to begin with. But as they took their seats in Room CC-121 at Northern Virginia Community College on November 2, they fully expected to hear what students usually hear in any Biology 101 class: that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was true.

As professor Caroline Crocker took the lectern, Nguyen sat in the back of the class of 60 students, Lowe in the front. Crocker, who wore a light brown sweater and slacks, flashed a slide showing a cartoon of a cheerful monkey eating a banana. An arrow led from the monkey to a photograph of an exceptionally unattractive man sitting in his underwear on a couch. Above the arrow was a question mark.

Crocker was about to establish a small beachhead for an insurgency that ultimately aims to topple Darwin's view that humans and apes are distant cousins. The lecture she was to deliver had caused her to lose a job at a previous university, she told me earlier, and she was taking a risk by delivering it again. As a nontenured professor, she had little institutional protection. But this highly trained biologist wanted students to know what she herself deeply believed: that the scientific establishment was perpetrating fraud, hunting down critics of evolution to ruin them and disguising an atheistic view of life in the garb of science.

[illinoissmith]

"Indeed...evil people do evil things, and trying to link their evil deeds to anothers religion or philosophy or world view, is as you say, nonsense and deceit...its also stupid, shallow, and clearly linked by people with some sort of axe to grind..."

Ideas have an effect on what a person does. They can play a crucial role in determining whether a person becomes evil. An individual's thoughts usually have a significant role on their actions.

People get their ideas for a combination of personal observations and outside sources. Those ideas that come, in whole or part, from other people (by way of books, discussion, etc.) often have a long history. They also often have a structure that tends to lead their holder in particular directions of action, or that tends to lead their holder in particular directions of personal thought, and toward specific other ideas.

To toss this entire aspect of human life out the window when analyzing the sources of evil actions is will lead to a dangerous level of ignorance about the world around us.

If evidence supports that a particular family of ideas tends, for specific reasons, to cause its holders to do specific things, the honest responsible thing to do is to discuss that. Not to ignore it on the grounds of not hurting anyone's feelings. Not to ignore it on the lie that ideas are disconnected from actions.

[Question_Assumptions]

Being "pro-life in debates on abortion or stem cell research always means pro-human life, for no sensibly articulated reason," he once wrote.

Trying a person for murder or rape always means murdering or raping a human, for no sensibly articulated reason. Should we consider the killing of rats to be murder or the killing of humans to be something less than murder and more like the killing of rats?

[CobaltBlue]

It apparently doesn't provoke combat from the luddites, and that's a shame.

By which I infer that you like to fight. Not that there's anything wrong with that . . . .

[DeweyCA]

Interesting that this guy wrote such along article that seemed to reflect both sides. He was so even-handed that I couldn't tell for sure which side he believed, ID or evolution. I will guess evolution, but he was understanding of the ID view, which is highly unusual.

[CobaltBlue]

I will guess evolution, but he was understanding of the ID view, which is highly unusual.

I would tend to agree with you.

[CobaltBlue]

Trying a person for murder or rape always means murdering or raping a human

Disagree. A properly written indictment must give the name of the victim (among other things).

[Question_Assumptions]

My badly worded point was that the vicim of the crime of murder or rape must always be a human, yet I don't see this clown taking his argument to it's final conclusion. If we can't assume that humans are distinct from animals in the abortion debate, should we assume they are distinct in any legal or moral sense, and what are the implications of riding that slippery slope?

[CobaltBlue]

Sorry, I have to warn you that you're talking to a lawyer (me).

I doubt that "murdering" animals is a problem unless the animal is also an endangered species.

"Raping" animals is, as far as I know, always illegal. Heck, it's also illegal to have "consensual" sex with an animal -- assuming that's possible. In other words, sex with animals is always illegal.

I guess we're on a slippery slope but this is my usual state of being.

[Rudder]

By which I infer that you like to fight. Not that there's anything wrong with that . . . .

Yeah.

I'm doin' some workouts...you know--training and such--to keep in shape.

Ain't nothing like a good slugfest before breakfast.

[Question_Assumptions]

If I paid you $100 an hour, would you have an easier time getting my point? ;-)

The person I quoted complained that the pro-life side worries about the abortion and research on humans without ever explaining why humans are special. My point is that we have laws against murder that apply to humans and not animals yet I don't see people navel-gazing about why we simply assume humans are special and only loons seem to think that its as OK to kill humans as it is to kill animals or that killing animals is murder.

As for bestiality, the legality varies by state and it's notably not illegal in several states (as a recent "accident" involving a man and a horse with the man dying from injuries sustained illustrated) and since animals can't give consent, arguably any sex with an animal is rape, yet I doubt you'd see sex with an animal, even in states where it is illegal, prosecuted under the same states that govern unlawful sex with a human.

To put this in terms that a lawyer might understand, the host of statues that make doing certain things illegal to others assume that the other is human and would not pass even be accepted by a court if the victim was an animal rather than a human being.

[illinoissmith]

"I think one can reasonably infer from this exposition that Dawkins is pro-abortion. The "Gap in the Mind" in his head is that tormenting "distant cousins" (bulls, foxes) is much more repugnant that murdering your own, direct offspring."

Dawkins is a hard core socialist and Benthamite Utilitarian, as I understand based on his interviews over the years.

Dawkins has this idea that living things are at war with their DNA, which, in his mind, practically tortures them to keep itself (the DNA) surviving. He thinks that human interests (and the interests of other living creatures as well) are fundamentally pitted against DNA and evolution. His solution is roughly along the lines of to try to use government to "stop" evolution and the tyranny of DNA, in the hopes of making a utopia. This is intertwined with Singer-type ideas about ethics and pain.

Of course this is whack, DNA is necessary for human life (and thus happiness) to continue, so it is not a fundamental conflict, and we can fight pain and suffering without also fighting DNA and evolution. To really fight evolution specifically with government would be to do things like institute laws that say talented people can't marry each other, inventive people must sit down and shut up (to freeze cultural evolution), to encourage as many abortions as possible in order to wipe out future humans that might live lives of pain, and other things on that order. Not too much better than the plans of people who last century claimed they were going to further evolution through direct government intervention.

The conservatives who keep fighting last century's socialism with paranoia about evolution are really, really missing the boat.

[CobaltBlue]

If I paid you $100 an hour, would you have an easier time getting my point? ;-)

Honestly, I charge strangers $150 an hour. $100 an hour is for friends. And I am dirt cheap for this area, but OK by me, I have a big heart.

[devolve]

110x25 cropped

[CobaltBlue]

BTW -lest that seem pricey (it does to me), my rate includes overhead. For example, my boys work for me, depending on the topic, at $15 to $20 an hour, but they're overhead. Their compensation comes out of mine, I don't add them on.

[potlatch]

Probably about halfway between those two would be good but I'm not the one selecting. You did a good and fast job on that!! The lettering is harder to read on the small one.

[devolve]

An egg is small

I wondered about red over the B&W BG

Maybe chartreuse?

[potlatch]

Chartreuse or another 'neon' color like orange. Maybe shrink the large barcode and then put fair sized text on it?? I'm telling the 'tutor' how to do things!!

[Calpernia]

I love it :)

This is going to be a FUN protest! :)

There is a few more details that have to be aligned, then I will post a thread and invite anyone here to join in.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[devolve]

plastic egg or blown egg?

plastic is more durable

brown? white?

a wide yet narrow bar would be easier to "apply"

maybe with less bars but wider and further apart to increase definition - crop & resize

F-T has some good bright neon colors for text and a test BG

TP BG and composite on barcode