Since some of the Republican candidates seem to have indicated that they don't believe in evolution, let me offer my perennial warning on this subject -- people who don't believe in evolution are dead wrong, but there are actually a very large number of them in the United States -- depending on how you count, it's about half of the population. So taking the creationist line or hesitating is a very understandable reaction for a practical politician.
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Evolution
04 May 2007 10:54 am
Comments (29)
Can somebody freeze that image so that we, the people, can identify who put up his hand? With a bit of luck it could become as iconic as Raphael's Last Supper.
It might be about half the population who don't believe in evolution, but its a very small fraction fo the people who "matter". That is, of the intellectual elite. If I were a practical politician, I would worry more about these people not taking me seriously than I would about the less well-informed half of the population at large.
Brownback, Tancredo, and Huckabee. The first two aren't surprising, but I though Huckabee was more mainstream.
Who cares if its understandable?
Jim W- the people who "matter" depend on context. If you're running for the republican party presidential primary, the people who "matter" are very different than if you're trying to run for the general presidential election, who are in turn very different than if your trying to actually be the president.
Al Gore believes in Creationism.
Eheu.
This kind of data makes me extremely sympathetic to Richard Dawkins, and the tone he has taken in these debates.
I know that polls frequently indicate that large percentages of Americans don't believe in evolution, but it's important to put this in perspective. Candidates who actively promote the teaching of creationism in public schools tend to go over like a lead balloon in elections, even in some of the darkest corners of Red State America.
In my experience, a great many Christians are very ambivalent on the matter and a simple yes or no question doesn't really capture their thinking. They may not really buy into macroevolution, but they understand that the world is more than 6000 years old and they want doctors and scientific researchers to have the best possible education.
Which is to say, this response might not hurt someone like Huckabee much in the general election, but if he actively campaigned for teaching "intelligent design" it probably would hurt him.
Lots of people don't believe in evolution, but a voter can fairly be deemed a wacko who will only vote for a creationist.
"Al Gore believes in Creationism."
A review of what Google turns up suggests that Gore is trying to do something like what many believing scientists have done since Darwin: paste Christian labels on the facts of evolution.
Not being Christian, the issue doesn't arise for me.
However, I don't think it makes sense to label Gore's views as Creationism with a capital C, as if he believed in the literal truth of scripture.
Does anyone know what HRC and Obama believe? I wouldn't be surprised if their views were similar.
Ha, where did the first cellular organism come from? Explain that one evolutionists.
Brownback, Tancredo, and Huckabee.
Has anybody gotten these guys' positions on what the value of pi should be?
Re: "Ha, where did the first cellular organism come from? Explain that one evolutionists."
Hey Korha,
Do you believe that yesterday actually happened? Ok, then. Tell me what I had for lunch yesterday, Mr. "I believe the past really happened".
Korha does not seem to understand the difference between a revelation and a scientific theory.
Nobody believes in evolution what you believe in is the ability of human beings to measure and assess their own environments. It is that assessment that leads to certain conclusions like say the Earth is much older than previously believed and animals and humans descend from common ancestors.
It is a framework for further investigation not some key to omniscience.
I agree with ellenbrenna...evolution isn't somethimng one "believes" in. If you phrase it that way, it becomes a matter of faith, like creationism. Evolution is a theory suppoprted by a vast preponderance of evidence. I accept the theory, based on the evidence.
Evolutionism and creationism are not the only alternatives.
I like the white mice, myself.
Or was it the dolphins?
america did elect a creationist as president. and might again.
Half of Americans don't believe in evolution? So what? Two-thirds believe "The story about Moses parting the Red Sea so the Jews could escape from Egypt ... is literally true, meaning it happened that way word-for-word." 60% believe "The story of Noah and the ark in which it rained for 40 days and nights, the entire world was flooded, and only Noah, his family and the animals on their ark survived ... is literally true, meaning it happened that way word-for-word."
http://www.pollingreport.com/religion2.htm
Two-thirds believe "The story about Moses parting the Red Sea so the Jews could escape from Egypt
These same 2/3 also think that Moses bore an uncanny resemblance to Charlton Heston.
I suspect that "half the population" includes people who either interpret evolution as meaning "atheism" (thanks, Prof. Dawkins) or else hold to some version of theistic evolution which ends up being classed as "creationism" in the surveys. far fewer than half the population belongs to any sort of fundamentalist church and I suspect that the number of people who adhere to hard-core young-earth creationism is fairly small.
The first two aren't surprising, but I though Huckabee was more mainstream.
It surprises you that a Republican from Arkansas who's also an ordained Southern Baptist minister doesn't believe in evolution? I urge you to recalibrate your "mainstream" meter.
(Additional fun could have been had by asking him if he believes in state ethics laws, or the independence of parole boards.)
1) I think it's rib-splitting hilarious when urban readers --who depend upon the New York Times to define Reality -- criticize rural denizens of the Red States for being uninformed and for depending upon Fox News for information.
2) In the same way, there's not much difference between having faith in the theory of evolution because an authority figure (scientist or professor ) says it's truth versus believing that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to Church because another authority figure (preacher) says it is so.
3) It's interesting that Darwin's theory only gain acceptance with the development of nuclear physics in the first part of the 20th century.
Darwin's random processes/selection obviously require a very long timeframe. Circa 1880 , Geologists felt the earth was obviously older than the 5000 years suggested by the Bible , but determining the age of the Earth was a non-trivial problem with Newtonian physics.
Someone -- I believe it was Lord Kelvin -- calculated that the Earth was somewhere around 100-500 million years old based upon the rate at which molten rock would radiate heat into space.
4) It was the discovery of uranium radioactive decay, the discovery of it's isotopes, their half-lifes and the rate at which uranium decays into lead that led to the discovery that the Earth is around 4.5 Billion years old -- more than enough time for Darwin's mutations/selection to work.
The basic idea is that uranium and existing lead separate when in molten lava. Hence, the lead found within uranium ore is the end product of uranium decay and one can calculate the age of a rock by determining the percentage of lead to uranium.
5) But a real scientist would note that we are ASSUMING that radioactive decay of uranium occurs at a constant rate. It appears to do so based on our observations over the past 100 years.
But extrapolating from what we see over 100 years back to 4.5 BILLION years ago is obviously a ..er.."leap of faith".
6) But I'm sure that liberal arts weenies who have graduated from Ivy League colleges know all that "stuff". What George Bush -- a prominent intellect created by Yale and Harvard -- calls
"fuzzy math".
It sure is a strange coincidence that the timing estimates of family tree branching based on fossils and uranium decay keep agreeing with the independent estimates made based on random mutations in the genetic code.
I'm sure its just another one of those clues God inserted into the world to confuse us.
Don Williams--
Actually, a "real scientist" would probably notice that the radioactive decay of uranium occurs because of the intrinsic properties of the subatomic particles that make up a uranium isotope. Said "real scientist" would also notice that there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the mass of neutrons and protons, or the strength of the strong and weak nuclear forces, or any of the other properties that affect the stability of radioisotopes have changed over time.
Therefore, a "real scientist" would probably conclude that radioisotope half-lives are constant and that any responsible theory about the history of the earth should assume that they have not changed significantly over time.
A real scientist might even note that there are a variety of other radioisotopes used for dating (potassium-argon, for instance) and these techniques give highly reproducible results within a small and consistent range of error.
But, hey, I went to one of those untrustworthy Red State public universities, so don't take my word for it. Please, by all means, tell me some more things that real scientists would say. I'm genuinely curious.
In the same way, there's not much difference between having faith in the theory of evolution because an authority figure (scientist or professor ) says it's truth versus believing that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to Church because another authority figure (preacher) says it is so.
I guess religious lunatics probably do believe whatever science they believe "because an authority figure (scientist or professor ) says it's truth." But modern people believe the science they know because they understand the rational soundness of scientific method versus lunatic religious revelations.
Re: But a real scientist would note that we are ASSUMING that radioactive decay of uranium occurs at a constant rate.
But that's a very strong and reasonable assumption, because radioactive decay is governed by some very precise constants of nature: the strength of electrostatic repulsion, the constant of the strong nuclear force (I forget its formal name), and Planck's constant (the constant of quantum indeterminancy). Vary even one of those slightly and nothing could exist even remotely like our universe. The very fact we are here is good evidence that these things do not vary over time.
LaFollette Progressive, you really shouldn't use the word "macroevolution." It's giving aid and comfort to the enemy to imply that there's a valid distinction between macro- and micro-evolution, since there's no rational basis for the distinction. At least put the word in quotes.
I had it explained to me once that a believing Christian doesn't just need God to make the first cell, he needs the whole Genesis story to be literally true. If there's no Adam and Eve, there's no Original Sin. No Original Sin, and Jesus' mission is nonsense.
As a nonbeliever, I have no idea what to make of that.
Re: I had it explained to me once that a believing Christian doesn't just need God to make the first cell, he needs the whole Genesis story to be literally true. If there's no Adam and Eve, there's no Original Sin. No Original Sin, and Jesus' mission is nonsense.
Taurine byproduct. This only is so if you are a literalist. No literalism, and that syllogism falls apart like a soggy wad of toilet paper.
(Original sin=human imperfection. Care to argue we aren't imperfect? OK, climb in a mental time machine, visit Hiroshima late morning on Aug 6 1945 or Auschwitz on the day of its liberation. Look, listen, feel, smell, taste the reality. Now tell me humans are perfect. I rest my case on original sin.)
Comments closed May 18, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
America is a stupid, stupid country. In no small part, this facet of our stupidity, too, can be blamed on the existence of the education major.
http://sherifffruitfly.googlepages.com/educationdoesn%26%2339%3Btmixwiththegre
Posted by sherifffruitfly | May 4, 2007 11:09 AM