Evolution for Beginners - Book Recommendations

[Grazza]

Clonehunter said:

Everyone has a creation belief.

No. Re-read what I wrote above about the nature of a scientific theory. Does that sound anything at all like a "belief"?

[kristus]

Clonehunter said:

Everyone has a creation belief. (Techinaclly, Evolution is a theory for creation. It supposedly talks about how animals were created and shit. Even though how they think the earth began is beyond me)

Maybe you should actually read/watch some of the information and learn about it.

Evolution isn't explaining how life came to be, that would be abiogenesis. Evolution explains the diversity of life.

As for the formation of Earth. It eventually came to form from the debris in the accretion disk left as a result of our sun being born. That also, has nothing to do with The theory of evolution. I would guess it's a part of astrophysics (but don't quote me on that).

[Technician]

Clonehunter said:

Techinaclly, Evolution is a theory for creation.

[Quast]

kristus said:

I would guess it's a part of astrophysics (but don't quote me on that).

That would be correct, the study of galactic, solar and stellar evolution is a large part of astrophysics studies.

For Clonehunter, the correct term would be 'biological evolution' because that's what it is. Any other usage of the term 'evolution' in my eyes is more or less lazy usage, even if offical as they do not follow the same tenets that biological evolution would. Our solar system isn't the way it is because of natural selection in the same way life on earth would be. But that is largely arguing semantics, and it is kind of pointless.

[Sharessa]

They say we all lost our tails growing up from little snails. I say it's all just wind in sails. Are we not men?

[Gez]

Danarchy said:

Are we not men?

We are devo!

[Csonicgo]

I would like to pop in to say the pope very recently admitted that the big bang "probably happened" and that god did it. I'm proud to say that the Pope is a deist.

[Maes]

The only ones questioning it are some backwards-ass "reverends" in the US Bible Belt. The rest of the world can and has moved on.

[Quast]

Maes said:

The only ones questioning it are some backwards-ass "reverends" in the US Bible Belt.

Openly disputing and opposing it is something very different than someone who is simply ignorant of it. On one hand you have people that are trying to maintain positions of power and privilege. On the other, you may have people that may be genuinely confused. Ultimately, when you, your family, friends and community hold the same ideas, they can be pretty hard to let go.

I can understand this because even in circles that accept and understand the ideas there is a lot of wrong information or straight up misinformation being tossed around (there is even some in this very thread). This isn't surprising because evolution isn't a simple thing to understand, and to study it properly requires knowledge in many different disciplines. That can be a daunting task for many people.

The rest of the world can and has moved on.

If 'the rest of the world' only included portions of the western world you might be correct.

[Maes]

Quast said:

If 'the rest of the world' only included portions of the western world you might be correct.

Questioning Darwin's theory of species' evolution is not new, however actively advocating Creationism with a Capital C (and all of the beliefs that go with it) is a 100% American trend with no real equivalent elsewhere, unless I missed something.

[Quast]

Maes said:

Questioning Darwin's theory of species' evolution is not new, however actively advocating Creationism with a Capital C (and all of the beliefs that go with it) is a 100% American trend with no real equivalent elsewhere, unless I missed something.

Creationism itself is a very specific thing however. But you didn't say that. you said: 'The only ones questioning it are some backwards-ass "reverends" in the US Bible Belt.'

Religious leaders don't question creationism, so you were talking about evolution. Then you said the rest of the world had moved on, but not believing 'creationism as taught in the united states' is not tantamount to accepting evolution. And as Quasar already stated, fundamentalist muslims do not accept evolution, and that's a lot of people. And then are plenty of people that probably have no idea what evolution is regardless.

[Maes]

Quast said:

Creationism itself is a very specific thing however. But you didn't say that. you said: 'The only ones questioning it are some backwards-ass "reverends" in the US Bible Belt.'

Because, when you question evolution, you're essentially advocating creationism. Perhaps not that particular "intelligent design" flavor of it that goes strong in the USA, I'll give you that.

Quast said:

Religious leaders don't question creationism, so you were talking about evolution.

Depends. The various authorities inside e.g. the Orthodox Church avoid taking a clear stance on it, but then again they avoid taking a clear stance about anything if they can get away with it.

Quast said:

Then you said the rest of the world had moved on, but not believing 'creationism as taught in the united states' is not tantamount to accepting evolution.

It's surely a great step forward, though.

Quast said:

And as Quasar already stated, fundamentalist muslims do not accept evolution, and that's a lot of people. And then are plenty of people that probably have no idea what evolution is regardless.

Muslims may not accept evolution in its Darwinian formulation simply because a great deal of them were never even taught it to begin with, seeing how backwards their education systems tend to be, with very few exceptions such as "moderate" muslim countries like Turkey. But that doesn't mean they share the same exact "Intelligent Design" beliefs with USA's Bible Belt preachers.

Oh and, isn't evolution scientifically provable (and proven)?

Put a bunch of e.g. fruitflies or bacteria in a hazardous environment, expose them to radiation or to a defiling substance, and see those more fit "evolve" and spawn new generations of fittest individuals. There's no practical difference between "evolution" and "survival of the fittest", at a macroscopic scale.

So,

• Evolution: reproducible, demonstratable, AND appliable to the economic/productive process.
  
• Creationism etc.: not
  

Seems pretty clear cut to me.

It's also a clear case of hypocrisy/doublethink when e.g. a farmer seeks out to breed better stock through selection (which is one of the mechanisms of evolution) but then denies its existence when going to church.

[Csonicgo]

Maes said:

It's also a clear case of hypocrisy/doublethink when e.g. a farmer seeks out to breed better stock through selection (which is one of the mechanisms of evolution) but then denies its existence when going to church.

I got in trouble at school for pointing shit like this out.

[Quasar]

Maes said:

Muslims may not accept evolution in its Darwinian formulation simply because a great deal of them were never even taught it to begin with, seeing how backwards their education systems tend to be, with very few exceptions such as "moderate" muslim countries like Turkey. But that doesn't mean they share the same exact "Intelligent Design" beliefs with USA's Bible Belt preachers.

Except they do. If you had read my post, I've seen Iranian national television programs where they repeat the exact same nonsense often quoted by ID proponents here in the states.

[Maes]

Except they wouldn't build something like that.

Still, that does not help the Bible Belters case: as citizens of the world's most industrialized country and leading economy, they have absolutely no reason to believe in ID, unless they also believe that their OGM crops, genetically selected & enhanced cows, and even the biological weapons their government is developing to "defend" them were also Created By God.

And I'm sure that those of them who own stock of a major OGM company wouldn't e.g. debate with the scientist of said company over whether evolution really works, as long as the $$$$$ keeps flowing ;-)

A poor muslim in some shithole like Iran or Somalia I can understand, OTOH.

[Quasar]

The IDers' arguments against all of the things you are mentioning is that they are directed activities toward a desired goal carried out by intelligent agents (us). This is not analogous to natural selection, which happens through a combination of chance and environmental pressures. They argue that the latter is not sufficient to drive evolution. Of course this is nonsense as there'd be no life left on Earth by now if it were false.

In order to accept the IDers' stance on natural selection you must then either also accept the young Earth idea, since you have to cut out most of the planet's billions of years of violent history (including its regular pattern of mass extinction events) in order for life to exist at all, OR, you must accept that despite all appearances to the contrary, God himself reaches down and personally decides what species go extinct at what exact times and only makes it look like natural processes are to blame for this so that he can send more people to hell for not believing in him.

[Quast]

Maes said:

It's surely a great step forward, though.

No, because in the united states, creationism began as an attempt to bring essentially young earth creationism into public classrooms until it was outlawed in the late 1980s. And then of course the yec's went back to the drawing board and created ID and has fought tooth and nail to get that into the classroom. As for the rest of the world, there are many people that simply don't care or have no real understanding of the issue, whether or not they may be practitioners of various abrahamic faiths. In fact I find your idea that only the people in the united states are oblivious to evolution to be ignorant of the situation at worst and insulting at best. I mean, there are places in the world, where there is no discussion, and there is no debate (even if you and I assume there needn't be one)

Oh and, isn't evolution scientifically provable (and proven)?

No. In fact, nothing in science is taken for granted. The general idea is that every idea can be possibly expanded upon and 'bettered' in a sense. (for example law of gravity -> theory of general relativity) The perfect example is evolution itself. It being the most studied and researched scientific idea there is. It really wasn't until the advent of modern genetics that we could really see what was going on, despite the fact that Darwin wrote his book in the mid 19th century.

It's also a clear case of hypocrisy/doublethink when e.g. a farmer seeks out to breed better stock through selection (which is one of the mechanisms of evolution) but then denies its existence when going to church.

To a lay person, to the pious farmer, to the priest, a cow will always be a cow regardless of the reproductive circumstances...and they aren't wrong so-to-speak, although they are in a way. Evolution itself occurs with every single incident of biological reproduction. However, speciation is something that may take 100s of thousands of years or more, even millions of years in certain cases, that is something we cannot readily observe in large creatures like cattle. Basically, from my reading, my discussing with people around me, the average person thinks of evolution as something like pokemon, where an individual will spontaneously change itself for some reason, or give birth to something completely different than itself. This is totally ridiculous, but it is absolutely true. A lot of people actually think this way.

Speciation itself is something that humanity has observed very few times and IIRC only in controlled observations. Although I may be wrong with that, I haven't looked into it for a great while.

[Technician]

Maes said:

Except they wouldn't build something like that.

Of course not. They don't need to build bogus "evidece" to back creationism. They simply banned evolution studies all together. What's sad is their youth have to come here for college (and often get paid to do it) to learn something that is crucial to biology.

[Maes]

Quast said:

No. In fact, nothing in science is taken for granted. The general idea is that every idea can be possibly expanded upon and 'bettered' in a sense.

This only applies to labile fields such as medicine and biology, that are considered "inexact" sciences. Unfortunately, they are also those that most people are familiar with (because of illnesses, medical issues, and because we're biological creatures, too). Other fields such as mathematics, metallurgy, applied physics etc. are much more "solid", so to speak.

Of course nothing is taken for granted at face value or because guy X said so, but becomes accepted through experimentation, reproducibility, and applicability to profitable economic endeavours.

And evolution has all of the above going for it.

Creationism, on the other hand, has all the consistence of a fairytale, crystal therapy etc. and the only economic viability it can have is by selling books to credulous individuals and getting certain pressure groups political influence. But I can't make e.g. a better crop or chemical weapon on Creationism alone.

And of course I never said that ALL Americans are ignorant pious hillbillies (remember what I said about leading economy etc.?) but there sure are a disproportionate number of them, something not justified by the country's overall technical and economic supremacy.

If we come down to arguments such as "Yeah, we have a lot of our own pig-ignorant bible-thumping hillbilles but take a look at Iran where everybody is one!", you're really demeaning your country.

[Quast]

Maes said:

This only applies to labile fields such as medicine and biology

And evolution is the keystone to our current understanding of medicine and biology.

And of course I never said that ALL Americans are ignorant pious hillbillies (remember what I said about leading economy etc.?) but there sure are a disproportionate number of them, something not justified by the country's overall technical and economic supremacy.

Well, I hate to say it, but you needn't understand nor accept evolution to do business.

[Maes]

Quast said:

Well, I hate to say it, but you needn't understand nor accept evolution to do business.

Depends on who you do business with and what your expectations are. Personally I wouldn't trust e.g. a CEO of a major pharmaceutical group that openly says that evolution is on the par with creationism. Strange as it may sound, there are people out there that care about congruency and consistency in someone's views, trade and action, and I'm one of them. Then again you or someone else may have lower standards and/or experience no cognitive dissonance whatsoever because of that.

Of course, if I'm buying flip-flops from a gypsy at the bazaar I too don't fucking care about what he believes in (or even about how he smells), but we can't grind everything down to a "bear no expectations whatsoever" level. Throwing in nihilistic and relativistic arguments against solid reason and applied science is just grasping at straws.

Otherwise, this debate is really no better than e.g. those revisionists claiming that both those who fought for the Resistance and for the Waffen SS in WW II are equally worth remembering and honouring, because they both fought for something they believed in, and what counts is having fought, and not whether it was right or wrong because that can't be objectively quantified. How convenient. Especially given that the burden of proof lies with creationists, not evolutionists here.

[Quast]

Maes said:

experience no cognitive dissonance whatsoever because of that.

No, I actually probably wouldn't, except in the incredibly rare case that I actually happened to know the personal feelings of some ceo on the nature of evolution. I'm not telepathic.

No really what kind of an argument is this. It doesn't make sense.

Otherwise, this debate is really no better than e.g. those revisionists claiming that both those who fought for the Resistance and for the Waffen SS in WW II are equally worth remembering and honouring, because they both fought for something they believed in, and what counts is having fought, and not whether it was right or wrong because that can't be objectively quantified. How convenient. Especially given that the burden of proof lies with creationists, not evolutionists here.

HA, HA, fucking quote me. Any post, past or present on doomworld where I even so much as allude to giving religious ideas respect or reverence.

[Maes]

Quast said:

No, I actually probably wouldn't, except in the incredibly rare case that I actually happened to know the personal feelings of some ceo on the nature of evolution. I'm not telepathic.

How about openly flaunted affiliations then? Then don't exactly tend to hide it when they are associated with a religious or political group.

Quast said:

No really what kind of an argument is this. It doesn't make sense.

Only because you tried to warp it with your sophistry. Nice try.

Quast said:

HA, HA, fucking quote me. Any post, past or present on doomworld where I even so much as allude to giving religious ideas respect or reverence.

Hurr durr, quote me specifically mentioning religious ideas then. Come on, I believe you understood perfectly what I meant. Otherwise, we can keep playing with words all day long.

Creationism is on the par with e.g. hollow or flat earth theories or crystal therapy or horoscopes, it just happened to be a common denominator in some religions (and its particular "ID" flavor is a purely American phenomenon, I repeat) but that doesn't make it a religious belief per-se. More like a crackpot delusion.

[Quast]

Maes said:

How about openly flaunted affiliations then? Then don't exactly tend to hide it when they are associated with a religious or political group.

[/b]
If it was open and I knew, yes, I would have a problem with it. Most people don't however.

Hurr durr, quote me specifically mentioning religious ideas then. Come on, I believe you understood perfectly what I meant. Otherwise, we can keep playing with words all day long.

No, your last 2 posts have perplexed me greatly, in fact. I have no clue what you are trying to say. I seriously don't understand. It's almost as if you are trying to say that either I am a creationist, or that I feel creationism has some value.

[Maes]

Quast said:

It's almost as if you are trying to say that either I am a creationist, or that I feel creationism has some value.

Well, you did question my saying that ID in its "canonical" formulation is a purely localized american phenomenon, and illustrated some examples of religions that advocate creationism-like beliefs.

But IMHO that's not the same ID supported e.g. by G.W. Bush (which in turn is linked to other controversial things like religious group lobbying, "war on terror", conflicts of interest etc.). Then again pretty much anything having even remotely to do with religion in the USA is pretty localized phenomenon, which wouldn't quite fly elsewhere.

[Quast]

Maes said:

Well, you did question my saying that ID in its "canonical" formulation is a purely localized american phenomenon, and illustrated some examples of religions that advocate creationism-like beliefs.

But IMHO that's not the same ID supported e.g. by G.W. Bush (which in turn is linked to other controversial things like religious group lobbying, "war on terror", conflicts of interest etc.). Then again pretty much anything having even remotely to do with religion in the USA is pretty localized phenomenon, which wouldn't quite fly elsewhere.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/76915/Third-of-teachers-want-Creationism

[Maes]

Quast said:

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/76915/Third-of-teachers-want-Creationism

Interesting, but it's not so strange for an American trend spreading to other Anglo-Saxon countries, is it? Perhaps I should have pointed that out, but I wouldn't be too surprised to see Canadians, Brits, Aussies and maybe some misguided New Zealanders and South Africans jumping into the bandwagon.

But never, say, in Germany, Poland, Italy, Russia or Greece.

And if a creationist movement is ever created here, it's more probable that it will be something directly controlled by whatever local church has more influence (e.g. in Greece that would surely fall under the authority of the Orthodox Church, which would come up with their own books and theories, rather than e.g. just copy the English-language American textbooks, like e.g. Canadians would do).

It's interesting to note this passage from wikipedia:

Strict creationists of the Christian faith usually base their belief on a literal reading of the Genesis creation narrative.

OK, that could NEVER happen within Orthodox or Catholic authority, because they both teach that the Genesis, the Bible, etc. are to be read in an abstract and metaphorical sense, and only priests can interpet it at all.

This is quite in contrast with the Protestant (and many American reformed Churches') that the Bible is to be taken literally or according to personal intepretation (and allow me to say it, it's the source of most of the Christian fundie-related problems in the States).

[Quast]

Maes said:

But never, say, in Germany, Poland, Italy, Russia or Greece.

http://www.thelocal.de/society/20090326-18267.html
Many Evangelical Americans might consider Europe a godless place, but as David Wroe reports, questioning the theory of evolution and teaching Creationism is on the rise in Germany.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,446307,00.html
Poland's deputy education minister has called for Polish schools to ditch Darwinism in favor of creationism. His party is also well known for gay bashing and for wanting to introduce the death penalty.

http://ncse.com/news/2010/06/creationism-russia-005566
A senior official of the Russian Orthodox Church called for the end to the "monopoly of Darwinism" in Russian schools during a recent talk in Moscow, according to Reuters (June 9, 2010). "Darwin's theory remains a theory," Hilarion Alfeyev, the Metropolitan of Volokolamsk and a permanent member of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Moscow, was quoted as saying. "This means it should be taught to children as one of several theories, but children should know of other theories too."

You don't even see the stupid surrounding you. Brace yourself my friend.

[lupinx-Kassman]

I believe in thread devolution, as this thread devolved from a thread asking for book recommendations concerning evolution into some weird debate between Quast and Maes.

[Maes]

Again, I was referring to the American-flavored Creationism, aka ID.

I specifically mentioned that local churches or pressure groups may might press for/get their own versions, but few will copy the US material literally (I would expect that to happen only where there is excessive pro-US bandwagoning...so that excludes Greece and Russia from the equation).

And even before I mentioned how -for the most part- Catholic and Orthodox churches tend to be officially silent on the matter.

Of course, that doesn't exclude that some "renegade" Archbishop (especially Orthodox) may promote his own agenda, which is way more probable in the Orthodox Church because it doesn't really have a central total authority similar to the Pope (the Archbishop of Constantinople has a "de jure" but not de-facto authority over Orthodoxy matter, since every Orthodox church is, in fact, autonomous (or "autocephalus" as is the ecclesiastic term).

Yeah, I'm not ignorant to the stupidity that surrounds me, but that would be useless without looking one or two layers deeper, wouldn't it?

In any case, probably none of the cases you mentioned made more than a splash in -very- local news or regional tabloids, and I don't read polish tabloids, sorry :-p

OTOH, the "American flavored" variant has come to mainstream attention because it got associated with G.W. Bush, the born-again Christians, the US led invasion of Iraq, the "war on terror" etc.

But mind the term: "attention". It's not the same as "adoption of precisely the same".