#3076: Les Lane — 06/07  at  11:59 AM
Scientific literature on "teaching the controversy"

#3078: Eva Young — 06/07  at  03:38 PM
I can't read the full blog entry. It seems like something from the left navigation bar is oscuring the entry.

I'm using IE version 6.

#3080: PZ Myers — 06/07  at  04:14 PM
On a Windows machine...when I get comments that are too long, Windows IE 6 bloats up the left column to handle it in a horribly broken way.

I've fixed it, but may I suggest FireFox? Great browser. Much nicer than IE.

#3099: — 06/08  at  10:22 PM
Crackpots and ideologues, eh? So skeptics of Darwin's theory like world-famous chemist Henry F. Schaefer, James Tour of Rice University's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, and Fred Figworth, professor of cellular and molecular physiology at Yale Graduate School (among the 100 signers of "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism" published Oct. 1, 2001, in The Weekly Standard), are just delusional low-wattage nutballs.

Same with their fellow scientists who are evolutionahooliganism skeptics and hold jobs at places like Princeton's Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry and its Plasma Physics Lab, and the National Museum of National History at the Smithsonian Institution, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. All just "crackpots and ideologues."

Thank goodness we have PZ of Moose Navel State College to keep us on track of who thinks what in the scientific community. :>)

SUSAN'S IN THE HOUSE!!!!!

#3142: Les Lane — 06/10  at  09:25 AM
Welcome Susan-

Glad to see your recognize the quality of Moose Navel State College. Henry Schaefer is hardly an authority on biology.
Whatever else PZ is, he's knowledgeable when it comes to modern biology. You'll learn much more by reading his biology than by reading authors whose biological interests are secondary.

#3200: — 06/10  at  08:13 PM
Well, Less :>), there's more to it than what you say.

Moose Navel State College (OK, the University of Minnesota-Morris) was ranked as a FOURTH TIER national liberal arts college in 2001 by U.S. News & World Report's "America's Best Colleges."

That means it ranked somewhere under #121, and that doesn't count all the best national universities, best regional universities, best regional liberal arts colleges, best business and engineering schools, and best specialty schools in the first three tiers of their categories. Its academic reputation scored a 2.4 out of 5.0. Its ACT 25th/75th percentile range was a flaccid 22-28.

Looks as though you've been "spun" by a PR machine. So solly to have to show you up.

WHEN YOU MESS WITH THE BESS, YOU DIE LIKE THE RESS . . . LESS!!! :>)

"Crackpots and ideologues," indeed. As for your attempted pejorations of U-GA anti-evolutionist chemist Dr. Shaefer, they show LESS than accurate scholarship as well, Les. To wit:

(from an online bio) During this lunch lecture, Dr. Henry Schaefer promises to examine this conflict metaphor both in terms of the lives of individual scientists and in terms of statistical considerations. The winner of the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry (1979), the same society's Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award (1983) and the Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry (London, 1992), Henry Fritz Schaefer III is a prolific scholar in his field. With over 750 scientific publications to his credit, he was the third most frequently cited chemist during the period of 1984 to 1991. Schaefer's research combines state-of-the-art computer technology with theoretical methods to address important problems in molecular mechanics. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Physics, President of the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists, and Director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia, where he also serves as the Graham Purdue Professor of Chemistry."

So he says evolution is a crock, and YOU say that makes HIM a crackpot?!? O . . . . K. :>)

Speaking of crackpots and ideologues . . . could it be that the problem with biologists like PZ is that they have overspecialized their knowledge base to the point of absurdity? That the inferences they draw from the sharply-narrowed focus of what is in front of them misleads and distracts them from grasping reality, in context? That's what I'm thinkin'.

They are well-informed in their narrow specialities, but badly misinformed in the hundreds of other ones -- including linguistics, which points to special design and NO WAY, JOSE, to evolution; and spiritual anthropology, which shows that the spiritual nature of the human being separates us incalculably from the rest of living creatures, and astronomy, which points toward a Creator to a mathematical certainty, or as close as we can call it. And on and on and on and on and ON.

It's great to be an expert in a specific field -- don't get me wrong on that; I applaud and revere deep knowledge. It's fantastic that college professors are seeking dialogue with the taxpayers who employ them, as this website does, and I'm grateful for the time PZ puts in to this and don't mean to be harsh.

On the other hand, he's dissin' my Main Man. And that don't make Mama very happy. No sir! Can I get a witness? Amen! :>)

Where anti-God, pro-evolutionaboobooism folks have gone wrong is that they are missing the big picture, what the weight of evidence and opinion from ALL disciplines, and by the way not just scientific disciplines, is saying. They are zeroing in on one note from one instrument, and ignoring the whole orchestra. They miss the harmony. They miss the music. They miss the SHOW.

Ever see the movie "The Sting"? The guys who got conned by the horse-race scam only had a little sliver of information. They inferred wrongly. Why? Because they didn't SEE the big picture -- that they were getting cheated.

It's the same thing with people who make decisions as important as whether or not Adonai, Science Guy, even exists, based on what some yahoo at Moose Juice State (or whatever) thinks he can conclude based on the 2.3 freckles he counts on a molecule of a certain variety of leg hair on a certain species of tsetse fly. "EUREKA! This means . . . THERE IS NO GOD . . . and anybody who doesn't agree with me is a CRACKPOT or an IDEOLOGUE."

And the One who MADE that freckle on that molecule is standing right in the lab room, patiently waiting, for the day these yahoos, who are beloved every bit as much as believers like me, finally quit squinting down at their microscopes and computers . . . and look up to see the focal point of the Big Picture . . . the Lord God Most High . . . and embrace the One Who loves 'em, warts and molecular freckles and all.

Loves you, too, and maybe a little more, Less, because I've asked Him to hook you and I know He will. :>)

#3202: Ben — 06/10  at  08:34 PM
Have you even bothered dealing with all the issues raised in the other thread you burst into like an obnoxious, inebriated 13-year old?

#3205: — 06/10  at  10:44 PM
Accepting the scientific evidence for evolution is *not* dissing God, not any more than accepting embryology or meteorology is dissing God because it contradicts those places in the Bible where it says He makes people and weather.

The picture I get from my 12 years of being a Christian (I'm 19, in case you wondered) is God working His amazing plan often through things we consider natural: weather systems, biological systems, people's free will. We don't need holes in our scientific understanding for God to be there. Presto change-o miracles aren't necessary for it to be God at work.

I would consider my getting saved as a kid to be a miracle. But that miracle occurred because I happened to meet two kids at a gymnastics class when I was 3, and became friends with them, and became friends with their friends, and then went to stuff at their church, and then happened to go to a sleepover at their friends' house one night and get told that marvelous truth. And now my whole family is walking with the Lord!

Now, God didn't write "Jesus Loves You" in the sky. Instead, He used seemingly chance things to draw me to Him. And I'm sure you have other experiences that show this same kind of thing. Why, then, must you discount the possibility that God might have worked this way to bring about the creation of life?

#3210: Les Lane — 06/11  at  09:23 AM
When I want to learn something I first look for the most knowledgeable people in the field, not those who share my agenda. When I write I try to avoid rationalizing and minimize blather.

#3212: Ben — 06/11  at  09:58 AM
Accepting the scientific evidence for evolution is *not* dissing Isis, not any more than accepting embryology or meteorology is dissing Isis because it contradicts those places in the heiroglyphs where it says She makes people and weather.

The picture I get from my 12 years of being a Egyptian (I'm 19, in case you wondered) is Isis working Her amazing plan often through things we consider natural: weather systems, biological systems, people's free will. We don't need holes in our scientific understanding for Isis to be there. Presto change-o miracles aren't necessary for it to be Isis at work.

I would consider my getting saved as a kid to be a miracle. But that miracle occurred because I happened to meet two kids at a gymnastics class when I was 3, and became friends with them, and became friends with their friends, and then went to stuff at their pyramid, and then happened to go to a sleepover at their friends' house one night and get told that marvelous truth. And now my whole family is walking with Horus!

Now, Isis didn't write "Horus Loves You" in the sky. Instead, She used seemingly chance things to draw me to Her. And I'm sure you have other experiences that show this same kind of thing. Why, then, must you discount the possibility that Isis might have worked this way to bring about the creation of life?

#3217: — 06/11  at  10:22 AM
Susan, when the first thing I think when reading your posts is that you could be part of an anti-creationism PSA along the lines of "This is your brain. This is your brain on creationism. Any questions?" I don't think you're going to be doing much for the intellectual respectability of your cause.

My advice is to read some basic evolutionary biology books and resources, like the following and then come back later:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
http://anthro.palomar.edu/synthetic/default.htm
http://zygote.swarthmore.edu/evo3a.html
Evolution: A Very Short Introduction by Brian and Deborah Charlesworth
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea by Carl Zimmer
The Theory of Evolution by John Maynard Smith

That should be enough to get your started on your way to understanding evolution.

#3226: — 06/11  at  11:31 AM
Ben: Charmed, I'm sure. :>) Sorry I'm epistemologizing on your birthday cake, but I'm sick of false teachers and can't sit back and watch all these lies and distortions keep God's beloved people from saving faith. I entered that other thread to refute the craven and boneheaded misinterpretation of the Jacob-Laban story in Genesis 30, and did a yeoman's job on everybody else's questions, too. But this isn't my thread and I don't think it's right to use his space to get off-topic for too darn long. Therefore, I entered THIS thread to refute the craven and boneheaded malarkey that only "crackpots and ideologues" believe in evolution. It is of crucial importance to point out that it is completely false to say that everybody who's smart beleves in evolutionary biologists. In fact, looks more like only the evolutionary biologists believe in evolutionary biology. :>) Don't mean to 'xplode your-all's minds, but garsh . . . there's a lot more to this than you're lettin' on.

abc: I'd accept the scientific evidence for evolution . . . if there WERE any. :>)

Who SAYS God DIDN'T make people and weather? For cryin' out loud!

If you believe that God set up the principles of science and then sat back and let random chance bring about universe and life, then that makes you a Deist and an anti-supernaturalist. Correct? Then you're not a Christian and you don't believe in the God of the Bible. OK? And your barn door's open bigtime, because if you buy in to the fact that there is a Being so smart and so powerful that He set everything up so that the universe and life could evolve, and you have a grasp of the stupendous, unthinkable logic that is behind everything that is, was and will be, then it is absurd to say that this same Being is just off somewhere, sitting on a cloud, paying celestial canasta, never having intervened in any way, shape, or form with His creation, including sending His Son to die on the Cross for us and teach us how to come to know our Creator, love Him and submit to Him. Reality does, indeed, include the miraculous and the supernatural. How can you deny that? You just can't. From my personal relationship in communion with God through the Holy Spirit, I can tell you that He is not into tricking us or confounding us. He is in to loving us. There is nothing haphazard or unplanned about anything in creation. That's because God did it, purposefully, His way. Just because we can't grasp the "how's" and "why's" quite yet on a lot of stuff doesn't mean He didn't do any of it. Look at all the boo-boo's and hoaxes of science through the years. We didn't understand that they were boo-boo's and hoaxes until they were exposed as such. Meantime, we believed in them. Well, God doesn't make mistakes and he doesn't deceive us or set things up to dupe us. He WANTS to be found out! He WANTS to be loved and admired. Most of all, God has given us the Bible, not only to teach us, but to draw us into relationship with Him. He is personal. Relationship is the thing, not "religion" per se. The Bible is chockablock full of stories of people coming to know God personally, and benefitting from that -- Abraham, Jacob, Job, David, Esther, the disciples, Paul -- and that's the whole point of the Bible: that God loves us, has made the universe for us, wants us to know Him, and does, indeed, intervene in our lives. The more we discover in science and every other walk of life, the more we come to know God. We're very, very lucky to be living at this point in time, with all our scientific and technical discoveries: God is very pleased with our progress, I can assure you. The trick, though, is interpreting our discoveries correctly. That's where pro-evolutionagogoists go wrong. Stuff points to God, not random chance. There is no such thing as chance, anyway, abc. Everything that happens is the logical consequence of a knowable cause. I hope this helps you start sorting all of this out.

To Less: Yes, but if you want to learn something that's applicable, and helps you establish good conclusions that lead you as close as possible to knowing truth, then you don't "one-source" it. What else in the universe appears by random chance, not by design: music? Art? Imagination? Intuition? You guys gotta get your eyeballs off the microscopes and into the Word of God, and then look around at life, and see that it's a whole lot more than the little bitty details that are all you are letting meet your little eyes. That's what you guys are doing wrong. It's called being "sucker-punched." Gotta get 'way, 'way out beyond the science lab to learn and grow and put it all together. As usual, God said it best: "In the multitude of counselors there is safety." (Proverbs 24:6 and also see Proverbs 15:22 and Proverbs 11:14 . . . it's such a key principle, He told us three times!) :>)

Ben: Does Isis have a Bible that we can use to know "Her" and document what "She" has done? Have 25,000 archaeological finds confirmed the statements in "Her" Bible? Have the perfection and inerrancy of it been established through the generations and the centuries? Ohhhh. Didn't think so. :>) You big palooka. :>)

Kevin: Thank you. That Swarthmore one looks very good. Of course, there's trueorigins.com or org to refute the talkorigins one. And 'course, I did go all through school getting evolutionary biology in my texts and I was a National Merit hon. men. student and Mortar Board at college, so . . . for what it's worth, I didn't JUST fall off the turnip truck on this stuff. :>) I also own and enjoyed Stephen Jay Gould's "Wonderful Life" and hae a number of other pro-evolution reference books, because I'm a serious scholar, not just somebody out here whistlin' Dixie. I'd say the best book to recommend to YOU is "Gray's Anatomy." Don't believe it is humanly possible to look through that and still believe that our bods came together like Pixie Sticks. :>)

For the firm. . . .

#3229: Les Lane — 06/11  at  11:39 AM
"only crackpots and ideologues argue against evolution"

It seems to me that Susan's rationaling supports PZ's point.

#3231: Ben — 06/11  at  11:43 AM
Does Isis have a Bible that we can use to know "Her" and document what "She" has done?

Claim.

Have 25,000 archaeological finds confirmed the statements in "Her" Bible?

Claim.

Have the perfection and inerrancy of it been established through the generations and the centuries?

Claim.

Let's check the score. Claims 3 - Evidence 0. Funny how one can claim to be "epistemologizing" when they appear to know so little about epistemology. :>)

#3309: — 06/13  at  09:22 PM
Susan:

"I'd accept the scientific evidence for evolution . . . if there WERE any. :>)" Fine, but the rest of your post really makes me doubt this. You seem to be saying that because I do, I'm not a Christian at all.

"If you believe that God set up the principles of science and then sat back and let random chance bring about universe and life, then that makes you a Deist and an anti-supernaturalist. Correct? Then you're not a Christian and you don't believe in the God of the Bible. OK?"

I never said that I believe that God "sat back," or even that God never works by means of miracles (that is, suspending physical laws). Do you think I would call myself a Christian if I didn't believe in the miracles of the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ?

Did you understand my analogies at all? A Christian might pray for it not to rain on his picnic, which shows that he believes that God is in control of the weather. Does that make him have to say that meteorology is false teaching?

You probably would say that God made you. You probably also know something about how you developed physically. I am only saying that one doesn't have to exclude the other; God doesn't have to suspend physical laws to work. And the evidence does not point to God poofing each separate species into existence (you don't have to agree with this; I just want you to understand where I'm coming from), just as it doesn't point to God poofing babies into existence. That doesn't mean God wasn't/isn't at work there.

"Stuff points to God, not random chance. There is no such thing as chance, anyway, abc. Everything that happens is the logical consequence of a knowable cause."

Do you know anything about quantum mechanics? It's the most accurately predictive theory ever to exist. And it's inherently probabilistic. Probability as we know it is just a statement that we don't know enough about the forces acting on something (like with the flipping of a coin). Quantum probability is different - once you have the probabilities, there really isn't any more. Far as we know, the universe is nondeterministic!

But this is somewhat off topic. (As are most of your comments to me, I think. They seem only tenuously related to what I was trying to get across.)

#3311: — 06/13  at  10:24 PM
Go Susan! I've been fighting this bunch on another page (NPR's cancellation of a biology teacher wanting to give his "teach the controversy" views). I should have shut up and let you talk.

#3324: Les Lane — 06/14  at  09:24 AM
Scholarship - lesson 1

Write on the board 100x - "rationalizing is not scholarship"

Repeat the lesson until you grasp the meaning.

#3326: — 06/14  at  09:53 AM
"I should have shut up and let you talk."

John -

You're about 100 times more coherent and thoughtful than Susan. She's really not doing your side any favors. She is one of the creationists who, unlike you, absolutely denys the existance of evolution despite mountains of evidence. While you are trying to reconcile the clear scientific facts with your worldview, a noble and thoughtful enterprise, Susan is sticking her fingers in her ears and humming.

#3328: PZ Myers — 06/14  at  10:03 AM
Humming? Yodeling. Off-key.

#3329: — 06/14  at  10:05 AM
Gee thanks, I think. I never got any kudos for coherence up till now. Susan, no evolution at all, even within species?

#3335: — 06/14  at  11:11 AM
Here are the abc's, abc:

A) You go along with a form of what's called "theistic evolution." I'm presuming you believe in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and you believe that the Bible is inerrant, as Jesus said it was inerrant. Correct? I also assume you believe in creation ex nihilo -- that God brought the universe into existence without using preexisting material, and "jump-started" life by making the first itty bitty living being, plus, somewhere along there, the human soul. True? And you believe that after He created that first itty bitty living being, God used evolution as a natural process to spur that first life into transforming gradually over millions or billions of years to produce the spectacularly various and increasingly complex and beautiful forms of physical life on this planet, including human life, ultimately . . . moi. :>) Is that right?

B) You're toast, then, abc. :>)

C) Evolution isn't true, so it can't be of God. God is truth; evolution ain't. OK? How we know this is that love is never destructive. God is love, and He would never have used a destructive process to create new life. OK? Evolution isn't creative and constructive; no new information or features are added; all that happens is a reshuffling of the features that were already contained WITHIN the "kinds" that God made in His inimitable "poof!" style in Genesis. OK? We're not seeing "new" species developing over the years; we're seeing genetic change and reshuffling of the "kinds" God made.

Surely, He allows destructive processes to make things better for the life He already made . . . like floods, diseases, Brittney Spears :>), which all wreak havoc for a while and then cause a better way to come forward. For every action, there's an equal and opposite. . . . I think of destructive processes as God's way of handing us a new deck. :>)

But "survival of the fittest" and "natural selection" have been misinterpreted as creative processes when instead they're "sorting" or "reshuffling" ones. Creation is much more consistent with the Cambrian Explosion, for example, than evolutionary punk eek.

Most of all, there's all the scientific reasons evolution and its speculative drivers (mutation, etc.) can't be true . . . a list that'd reach to the moon, and if you follow it, you'll find me up there, MOONING all those who continue to deny the reasons evolution can't be true. :>)

Maybe it would help you to list a couple of the key reasons you believe evolution is true. Then I'll try to 'xplain why it just ain't so.

For Christians, another word: evolution can't be true, because orderly things arising out of chance, even if we call it "seeming chance," just ain't His way. He's organized, Baby. He wouldn't have worked this way. It isn't God's style. He's decisive: Red Sea. He's compassionate: the Cross. He doesn't dink around and do anything half-baked: Revelation. (YOO HOO, you God-denying nonbelievers. Read that one. WAKE UP AND SMELL THE JAVA, MAN.)

The whole deal of His Creation, as explicated in the Bible through and through, is that He wants to have a relationship with those He made in His image -- us humans. The more you read and study the Bible as the revealed documentation of His Personality, the more you see that He never use a process that could be so easily disproved (evolution) and looks weaker and weaker upon inspection, not stronger. He's sooooo much better than that. He's God, remember? :>)

He always does thing on a God-plane. Evolutionagogohooligans are stuck on a man-plane. Therein lies their trap, abc. Don't fall into it.

When you buy in to evolution -- that God set up the principles and processes of evolution but fixed it so that we can't logically confirm what He did -- you're denying the God of the Bible, the Storyteller, the Lover. You're accepting a "God as a magician / trickster" approach. You are dissing God, bigtime. He WANTS to be "found out." He DOESN'T conceal Himself. He REVEALS himself.

As time goes on, God reveals Himself more and more to us, in every facet of existence, including, but not limited to, science. Since evolution is just getting more and more problematic as our scientific knowledge advances, its credibility as God-given gets further and further stretched. It's beyond a G-string by now, abc. It's beyond a THONG! :>) For most Christians, it SNAPPED a long time ago. But you're young . . . keep reading . . . stay in a quality, teaching church . . . you'll get there.

A very good synopsis of this is the book "What Darwin Didn't Know: A Doctor Dissects the Theory of Evolution" by Geoffrey Simmons, M.D. (Harvest House, 2004).
To John Lyon: thank you. It's nice to know you're out there slugging away, too. :>)

To Less: What the doodly ever. Sticks and stones. . . . :>) Hey, you pulled a big boner in the local daily's letters to the editor column the other day. Don't you know that Darwin repudiated Christianity, bigtime? Bone up on it! Let me know if I can enlighten you. I expect you to write a sweet, humble retraction for the Pulse. If you don't, you'll define yourself permanently as a big palooka. A FATE WORSE THAN HAVING TO GO TO SLEEP EVERY NIGHT LISTENING TO A TAPE OF ME TALKING!!!! :>)

#3336: Les Lane — 06/14  at  11:22 AM
Susan - reread OWH

Scholarship - lesson 1

Write on the board 100x - "rationalizing is not scholarship"

Repeat the lesson until you grasp the meaning.

#3337: — 06/14  at  11:24 AM
Hi, John: Yes, within species. Example: there are something like 16 skin colors in humans. Obviously, the first two could only express one each. They had the genetic start-up capital for the remaining 16. Did other skin colors in succeeding generations "evolve," then? Well, kind of. I call it "reshuffling," however. No NEW genetic info was added, so technically it shouldn't be called "evolution."

I wish we could come up with better terms than "microevolution" and "macroevolution" to 'xplain how change has occurred over time within "kinds," but that we don't truly see progressive evolutionary change in the familiar, life-from-the-same-amoeba sense.

I think the whole shootin' match is over semantics and definitions. Goes to "kinds" in Genesis.

And, to be "kind," I'll quit and let somebody else expound. :>)

#3338: — 06/14  at  11:39 AM
Susan: I believe that evolution will have no answer for creation of life or for man's consciousness, as these were created by God. I also agree that God intends for us to learn about his creation. I don't know, however, whether or not he used or allowed evolution (meaning "reshuffling" or adaptation, not creative ability) in His process. It appears, from the Cambrian Explosion, that all the species were created, not evolved from a common mother, but does it matter if this detail were otherwise? Does the Bible really preclude this possibility? (Sorry guys, is this off topic? I also think I'm about to get laid into...)

#3339: — 06/14  at  11:42 AM
Susan: Oops, I wrote my last entry without seeing your lastest post. I agree much of the problem here is semantics.