Why Darwin Matters »
Posted by: Neophile 7 months, 3 weeks ago143 Comments Report this Story
Charles Darwin had a big idea, arguably the most powerful idea ever. And like all the best ideas it is beguilingly simple. In fact, it is so staggeringly elementary, so blindingly obvious that although others before him tinkered nearby, nobody thought to look for it in the right place.
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Radiofreeeuropa7 months, 3 weeks ago
With many of the US political "leaders" making claims they don't believe in evolution to pander to the cults and the horrifically unintelligent, it is high time to put an end to the ludicrous discussion.
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jordan117 months, 3 weeks ago
It's just a symptom. Ignorance will be the hallmark of the first decade in the 21st century. It has been given media and political credibility, which feeds those who choose it over enlightenment. Once educated people get what's happening, & they are 'getting it', it will again be pushed down. But it will surface another day. There's no way to completely eliminate it, & I believe modern societies now and in the future will just have to deal with it as well as its consequences.
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Spadecaller7 months, 3 weeks ago
Thanks for posting this.
RFE:
"With many of the US political 'leaders' making claims they don't believe in evolution to pander to the cults and the horrifically unintelligent, it is high time to put an end to the ludicrous discussion."
Don't hold your breath!
The need to return to ignorance and darkness is as old as childbirth itslelf. In fact, as Freud so aptly explained it; a person's fear of growing up and going out into the world without protective parents is so great that they often feel the need to recreate an imaginary family. Hence, the Father, the almighty powerful god, and the holy mother.
IN addition to Darwin, many of our great thinkers are still dismissed by ignorance, which stems from fear and emotional immaturity. In addition to Darwin,Freud is a fine example of this too.
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smithichie7 months, 3 weeks ago
The simple truth about evolution is that life changes over time. This truth is supported with evidence from multiple fields of science, no faith required.
All the while evolution has been gaining evidence and support, even when fields of science unknown to Darwin, have been discovered, after all this time, the best Creationists have been able to offer, is they changed their names a couple of times.
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Endoscopy7 months, 3 weeks ago
That is not a simple truth. There is NO factual evidence of one species transforming slowly into another species. Darwin himself said that the fossil record would find this and prove his theory and if it didn't then his theory is false. Now we have theories of why that is not in the fossil record.
By the way, which theory of evolution is the correct one. When I was in college a professor was asked how many different theories there were and he mentioned a few different main branches and then said there was one for every person studying it. And you want to say it is a simple truth.
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Radiofreeeuropa7 months, 3 weeks ago
Please educate us, science gladly dismisses ideas that are proven false. It does not cling to theories that are disproven. The fact is natural selection is observable. Also please tell us all what "the rest of your lies" are. We are apparently so ill informed and now... liars. Please know that ad hominem slurs do not make an argument.
I have observed bacteria become resistant to antibiotics after a number of generations. Isn't this natural selection? Or do you have a better explanation? Surely the entire world would want to know if your explanation is valid.
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smithichie7 months, 3 weeks ago
Natural selection is observed each cold and flu season, it is observed with everytime a new pesticide or herbicide is needed, it is observed everytime new anti-biotics are needed.
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smithichie7 months, 3 weeks ago
I would call the mutation, that some humans carry, that prevent them from developing wisdom teeth, to be quite useful.
Of course, to creationists, our jaws were designed to be too small, for many humans to be capable of accommodating wisdom teeth. Design flaw or just one of those 'mysterious ways'?
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Radiofreeeuropa7 months, 3 weeks ago
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/search...
Here are 19 articles citing examples of evolution.
Yes as I said in a bio lab while in school we observed bacteria become immune to penicillin over a couple generations.
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Radiofreeeuropa7 months, 3 weeks ago
Not MY point of view. Many many years of scientific inquiry.
Name a single respected biologist who disbelieves evolution.
It is unintelligent to reject science in favor of myth inmy humble opinion.
(The only one I ever heard of was a theologian who also had a degree in science.)
Fine and dandy to question it. But dismiss it? In favor of what?
Scientific evidence for evolution:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/search...
By all means if you have a better process that would prove evolution wrong I know the entire scientific community will be fascinated. If you make the case for it I'm sure biologists will gladly stop lending legitimacy to the idea.
If on the other hand you simply don't want it to be so because of theology (Or I should say very narrow interpretations of theology, since the majority of evolution believers are not atheists) I would say you are limiting God as a being not capable of being behind evolution.
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Radiofreeeuropa7 months, 3 weeks ago
I am here to share my opinion, your welcome to disagree. My opinion is that it is foolish to dismiss science in favor of what some self proclaimed religious "expert" says. I may have indeed been condescending about voicing this opinion because yes I strongly think it is SO! Should I have said foolish instead of unintelligent? Yes but I've already said that.
If you can give an example where some religious group opposed science and the religious group ended up being right, I will cease and desist all criticism of anti-evolutionists.
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Radiofreeeuropa7 months, 3 weeks ago
Your silence displays quite a bit about you GridCords.
Were the religious leaders correct to jail Galileo? Bacon?
(men of science who believed in God by the way)
Theologians of Galileo's time labeled the heliocentric thesis "philosophically and foolish and absurd and formally heretical, since in many places it expressly contradicts the sentences of the Holy Scriptures according to their literal meaning, the common exposition, and the sense of the Holy Fathers and doctors of theology."
Sound familiar? Yet the fact that the sun does not revolve around the Earth does not really threaten religion does it?
Nor does evolution.
"Let the earth bring forth grass" (1:14-19).
Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes but "the earth brought forth grass" sounds like maybe Genesis is not anti evolution after all to me.
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Obaku7 months, 3 weeks ago
As it turns out, important as natural selection is to the evolutionary process, it is not everything.
The geologic processes of the Earth, and interplanetary bodies have played the crucial role in setting the course for life.
The change of climates, the movement of the continents, volcanoes, comets, asteroids, mass extinctions all changed both the directions and the materials of evolution.
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tomboy5017 months, 3 weeks ago
Another one of this series of articles on Darwin today addressed just that question:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/09/d...
"What would Darwin have made of the Human Genome Project?"
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smithichie7 months, 3 weeks ago
Those geological processes and interplanetary bodies you speak of, is how natural selection occurs.
The environment changes, naturally, and a selection is made for life best adapted to survive that enviornment.
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Obaku7 months, 3 weeks ago
No dearie, extinction is not selection.
Natural selection is, per se, a gradual process.
A comet the size of Connecticut is anything BUT gradual.
Think of it this way - natural selection is like the rudder of a ship. A hurricane comes along, and the rudder becomes almost irrelevant, for awhile.
Natural selection depends on variation, and suddenly, the amount and types of variation are radically altered.
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smithichie7 months, 3 weeks ago
Crationism needs to get some testable evidence supporting it, before it should be taught in a science classroom. If people need to go to court to enforce this, so be it. ID is given the same chance in the court as evolution, but it has been unable to prove it anything more than creationism, let alone a science.
I have no problems with creationism, in ALL it's forms, being taught in religious comparison classes, but it certainly doesn't belong in a science class. This means, Hindu and Inuit creationism should be studied alongside Christian creationism, in that comparison course.
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smithichie7 months, 3 weeks ago
What I notice, is a failure for creationists to present ANY, let alone, accumulationg evidence, FOR creationism. Creationists tend to spend their time talking about evolution, not presenting evidence supporting creationism. If your 'accumulating evidence' were to somehow disprove evolution, that would not prove creationism.
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Radiofreeeuropa7 months, 3 weeks ago
Where is the vast and accumulating evidence against evolution?
All I've ever seen is religious people trying to disprove it and failing. How about a science link if the evidence is "vast".
I mean I can give you some that support the concept.
http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/29620
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/19...
Every site in the first 4 pages of a search for anti evolution articles were not science but religious sites.
The general principle of evolution is, given the scientific evidence, logically unassailable and that the concept is a law of nature as truly established as is, say, gravitation. That scientific certainty makes the widespread rejection of evolution in our modern age something of a puzzle (but that's a subject for another essay). In a modern liberal democracy, of course, one is perfectly free to reject that conclusion, but one is not legitimately able to claim that such a rejection is a reasonable scientific stance.
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Obaku7 months, 3 weeks ago
Not so. Try teaching that the Earth is flat, and your butt will most surely end up in court!
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earthlingerer7 months, 3 weeks ago
Actually, NO.
Natural selection selection is based on heritable success, whether sexual, or asexual.
And yes, genetic modification and mutation are the limited ways that evolution occurs.
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Radiofreeeuropa7 months, 3 weeks ago
Maybe because it's not Science. Religion has no place in a science classroom. Teach it in philosophy, or religion. Not Science and even I won't object.
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tchef7 months, 3 weeks ago
It's not the schools job t teach religion. That's the churches job. If you include one religions explanation then you have to include all of them. I don't have a problem with a school offering a comparative religion class, in fact in the world we live in today with all the conflicts between the worlds faiths it may be a good idea but it would have to be taught impartially with no preference to any one religion.
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Sock_Puppet7 months, 3 weeks ago
Among the paradigmatic shifts in thought and research in the past several decades, has been the elevation of concern about the future and it's position approaching equality with concern about the past. Just ask any microbiologist. =D
But I'm also afraid of the dumbing down I see in America and the world at large. Without a reference to the past, how will the youth of today be able to plan, execute and deploy future assets in a Global Economy?
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eugenegerard7 months, 3 weeks ago
Darwin's original ideas were fairly uncomplicated. I think when all is said and done. The theory will expand into a very complex realization of change that could be compared to a symphony.
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Mutainia7 months, 3 weeks ago
I'm STILL waiting for Dawinists to explain the Venus Fly-trap, bat wings, and, pteranodon.
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