Well, all this is interesting to me, anyway, and that's what matters here. The Internet is a terrible thing for someone like me, who finds almost everything interesting.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Missouri bill redefines science
Last I heard, only 6% of American scientists now call themselves Republican. Is it any wonder? (Not that the Democratic Party is always great, when it comes to science, but they're not this bad.)
And all this is just to push Creationism! How crazy is that? After all, evolution is the foundation of modern biology. It's the bedrock on which the rest of biology stands. There is no controversy in science about that.
Everything we've learned in the past 150 years or so has just confirmed evolution. Charles Darwin didn't even know about genes, let alone about DNA. We know vastly more than we did back then, and it's just made the scientific consensus about evolution even stronger.
No, this "controversy" doesn't exist in science. It's all just a matter of religious zealots pushing a 2,000-year-old myth. It's the 21st Century, but they still want to think that 'God' made Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden - literally! Incredible, isn't it?
Bill, why are you still amazed at this fact? I give the conservatives credit to be smart enough to realize that God and Evolution are mutually exclusive. People who try to embrace both don't understand evolution. Evolution flat out denies the need of God. I can't blame the faithful for rejecting science, because they are savvy enough to at least intuit that science is the denial of God.
The people that bother me are those who try to claim God can science coexists.
Religion rejects reality and embraces a delusion. It seems silly to embrace reality and a delusion. To me that means you know not reality or your religion.
It's like the movie The Matrix. Take the red pill and know the truth, take the blue pill and forget. You can't take both.
These people have made a choice. They want God and eternal life. They want it bad enough to deny reality, to refuse logic and evidence.
We live in a world where most people are opium smokers. Few of them will give up their habit. They are not apathetic lotus eaters though. They are cunning enough to attack science, to undermine education, to spread FUD about reality. Like any hardcore drug addict, they will go to any length to maintain their high.
In a strange way I admire their tenacity of avoiding reality.
What I wonder about is what the world would be like if religion was forgotten and everyone understood science and saw reality. How would that change our global culture?
Sure, Jim, if you really understand it, evolution is the nail in the coffin for religious belief. But that still doesn't mean human beings can't believe both.
Heck, most mainstream Christian denominations do accept evolution, and there are even Christian biologists (not many, but some).
That's because people aren't always rational, aren't always consistent, in what they believe. And that goes double for the faith-based!
Should believers stick with a flat Earth? Should they continue to insist that the Sun revolves around the Earth, since the Bible clearly indicates that?
Denying evolution is equally ridiculous, so why wouldn't they make their peace with it? After all, believers are very good at rationalization. Indeed, as I say, the churches themselves already do this.
In fact, most American Christians belong to a denomination which does accept evolution, at least... in part. (They insist that it must have been guided by 'God,' despite the abundant evidence against that and no evidence for it. And they ignore what that implies about their deity, too.)
It's mostly just their members who refuse to give up, and I find that astonishing. I wouldn't be more surprised if they continued to insist that the Earth was flat or that our planet was the center of the universe.
150 years after The Origin of Species, evolution is the foundation of modern biology. Everything we've discovered since then - and we've made incredible advances in biological science - has just confirmed Darwin's insight (in general, if not in specific details - just as we'd expect).
So yes, I find this denial incredible. They might as well still be denying that the Earth is billions of years old. :)
I'm a skeptic. I think it makes sense to have reasons for what I believe, so I apportion my belief to the evidence. You're welcome to disagree. Please, tell me I'm wrong. I probably don't agree with anyone about everything. Why should disagreement be a problem? Check the Pages section below for series posts and links to book reviews and game posts, as well as contact info. Unfortunately, I rarely blog at all, anymore. So don't expect new posts. - Bill
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It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong - Richard Feynman
The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other. - Sir Francis Bacon
When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science. - Hal Clement
No matter how many times a theory meets its tests successfully, there can be no certainty that it will not be overthrown by the next observation. This, then, is a cornerstone of modern natural philosophy. It makes no claim of attaining ultimate truth. In fact, the phrase "ultimate truth" becomes meaningless, because there is no way in which enough observations can be made to make truth certain and, therefore, "ultimate". - Isaac Asimov
The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion. - Treaty of Tripoli, passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams (1797)
I don't doubt the sincerity of dowsers, but even after we've demonstrated that they can't produce results that are any better than chance they'll still go away believing in their abilities... It is like the mother whose son is caught shoplifting on tape. She wonders why someone would want to frame her child by producing a fake video. - James Randi
During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church ... imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. - Mark Twain
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. - Bertrand Russell
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. - Friedrich Nietzsche
I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them. - Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.
This is not about proof. Science does not use proof. We favor evidence, and the work consists largely of the slow accumulation of evidence in support of ideas, not magically potent proofs that establish an idea as unassailable. - PZ Myers
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We are prodding, challenging, seeking contradictions or small, persistent residual errors, proposing alternative explanations, encouraging heresy. We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs. - Carl Sagan
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120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer. - Sam Harris
To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man. - Michael Servetus, burned at the stake in 1553
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We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with just as much apparent reason. - Thomas Macauley, 1830
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men. - Edward R. Murrow
The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Science is simply common sense at its best - that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic. - Thomas Huxley
There is no absurdity so obvious that it cannot be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to impose it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. - Arthur Schopenhauer
Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. ... Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. - President Thomas Jefferson
To be elected in America, no matter from what party, the candidates have no choice but to year after year pledge to lower taxes further and further. We have become the nation of Ken and Barbie, looking good but very poor at the math. - Rack Jite
Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them. - Steve Eley
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3 comments:
Bill, why are you still amazed at this fact? I give the conservatives credit to be smart enough to realize that God and Evolution are mutually exclusive. People who try to embrace both don't understand evolution. Evolution flat out denies the need of God. I can't blame the faithful for rejecting science, because they are savvy enough to at least intuit that science is the denial of God.
The people that bother me are those who try to claim God can science coexists.
Religion rejects reality and embraces a delusion. It seems silly to embrace reality and a delusion. To me that means you know not reality or your religion.
It's like the movie The Matrix. Take the red pill and know the truth, take the blue pill and forget. You can't take both.
These people have made a choice. They want God and eternal life. They want it bad enough to deny reality, to refuse logic and evidence.
We live in a world where most people are opium smokers. Few of them will give up their habit. They are not apathetic lotus eaters though. They are cunning enough to attack science, to undermine education, to spread FUD about reality. Like any hardcore drug addict, they will go to any length to maintain their high.
In a strange way I admire their tenacity of avoiding reality.
What I wonder about is what the world would be like if religion was forgotten and everyone understood science and saw reality. How would that change our global culture?
John Lennon wondered about that too.
"Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace"
:)
Sure, Jim, if you really understand it, evolution is the nail in the coffin for religious belief. But that still doesn't mean human beings can't believe both.
Heck, most mainstream Christian denominations do accept evolution, and there are even Christian biologists (not many, but some).
That's because people aren't always rational, aren't always consistent, in what they believe. And that goes double for the faith-based!
Should believers stick with a flat Earth? Should they continue to insist that the Sun revolves around the Earth, since the Bible clearly indicates that?
Denying evolution is equally ridiculous, so why wouldn't they make their peace with it? After all, believers are very good at rationalization. Indeed, as I say, the churches themselves already do this.
In fact, most American Christians belong to a denomination which does accept evolution, at least... in part. (They insist that it must have been guided by 'God,' despite the abundant evidence against that and no evidence for it. And they ignore what that implies about their deity, too.)
It's mostly just their members who refuse to give up, and I find that astonishing. I wouldn't be more surprised if they continued to insist that the Earth was flat or that our planet was the center of the universe.
150 years after The Origin of Species, evolution is the foundation of modern biology. Everything we've discovered since then - and we've made incredible advances in biological science - has just confirmed Darwin's insight (in general, if not in specific details - just as we'd expect).
So yes, I find this denial incredible. They might as well still be denying that the Earth is billions of years old. :)
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