“I absolutely believe in evolution. If anything at all, I’ve found the missing links in you[Matthews], Olberman, and Shuster”.

Of course, not one bit of this has any bearing on the validity or morality of the Theory of Evolution. Someone can take their knowledge of physics and create an atomic bomb to use for evil purposes. By your logic, that means physics is bad and e=mc^2 is false.

maleman on May 7, 2009 at 8:51 PM

obviously it has a great bearing on the ‘morality’ of evolution…racism and eugenics is IMPLICIT in the theory..and since you think evolution is so valid, why didn’t you deal with my earlier objections to it?

If you can’t understand the difference between Natural Selection and Eugenics, you are lost.

did you read darwin’s own words? do you agree with them or not? survival of the fittest, getting rid of the ‘useless eaters’ right?

this has been known and commented on for a long time…by istorians and biologists…

The Darwin-Hitler connection is no recent discovery. In her classic 1951 work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt wrote: “Underlying the Nazis’ belief in race laws as the expression of the law of nature in man, is Darwin’s idea of man as the product of a natural development which does not necessarily stop with the present species of human being.”

The standard biographies of Hitler almost all point to the influence of Darwinism on their subject. In Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, Alan Bullock writes: “The basis of Hitler’s political beliefs was a crude Darwinism.” What Hitler found objectionable about Christianity was its rejection of Darwin’s theory: “Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.”

John Toland’s Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography says this of Hitler’s Second Book published in 1928: “An essential of Hitler’s conclusions in this book was the conviction drawn from Darwin that might makes right.”

In his biography, Hitler: 1889-1936: Hubris, Ian Kershaw explains that “crude social-Darwinism” gave Hitler “his entire political ‘world-view.’ ” Hitler, like lots of other Europeans and Americans of his day, saw Darwinism as offering a total picture of social reality. This view called “social Darwinism” is a logical extension of Darwinian evolutionary theory and was articulated by Darwin himself.

link

ideas have consequences, and as provine admits, evolution is far more than just a science theory, its a worldview…a religion.

“‘Social Darwinism’ is often taken to be something extraneous, an ugly concretion added to the pure Darwinian corpus after the event, tarnishing Darwin’s image. But his notebooks make plain that competition, free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality were written into the equation from the start- ‘Darwinism’ was always intended to explain human society.” (Desmond, Adrian [Science historian, University College, London] & Moore, James [Science historian, The Open University, UK], “Darwin,” [1991], Penguin: London, 1992, reprint, pp.xix).

“The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world.” (Darwin, Charles R. [English naturalist and founder of the modern theory of evolution], “The Life of Charles Darwin”, [1902], Senate: London, 1995, reprint, p.64).

A direct line runs from Darwin, through the founder of the eugenics movement-Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton-to the extermination camps of Nazi Europe.” (Brookes, Martin.,”Ripe old age,” Review of “Of Flies, Mice and Men,” by Francois Jacob, Harvard University Press, 1999. New Scientist, Vol. 161, No. 2171, 30 January 1999, p.41).

As to that issue, you are also patently incorrect in asserting that Darwinian evolution has been proven. What you can cite in terms of proof of “evolution” are cases of intra-species modifications. They do not prove what is more accurately referred to as Darwinian macro-evolution. Efforts to prove Darwinian macro-evolution basically come down to strained efforts to say “it’s possible.” What proponents of intelligent design, such as Michael Behe, are saying is that intelligent design explains the data far, far better than Darwinian macro-evolution.

Eugenics are nothing more than applied evolution..and its racist as hell…

If you can’t understand the difference between Natural Selection and Eugenics, you are lost.

Analogy: Assisted Suicide is not applied physiology.

Darwin’s cousin Galton founded the eugenics movement, even coined the term….and his sons were active in it…as was margaret sanger…and of course the eugenics policies of Hitler and the ‘master race’ were the ultimate expression of this idea…

Of course, not one bit of this has any bearing on the validity or morality of the Theory of Evolution. Someone can take their knowledge of physics and create an atomic bomb to use for evil purposes. By your logic, that means physics is bad and e=mc^2 is false.

Be careful what you wish for. Once you get to have your religion in the science class, the others have just as much right also.
firepilot

ohhhhh
so close!

If you believe that only “science” should be taught in “science class” then why would you want Evolution taught in science class?

Evolution is only an un-provable theory.
As is ID or the Hindus version, or any version.

If you allow one ya have to allow them all, otherwise your not being intellectually honest.

If you favor one over the other then your nothing more than an unedumikated bigot like
Chris Matthews.

Badger40 on May 7, 2009 at 1:34 PM
true, and your example of the A-bomb is better than mine.

Not exactly.

E=MC2 was not proven till Nov. 21, 2008

Einstein’s E=MC2 Proven Thanks to Quarks
AFP

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/21/einstein-formula.html

And the first man made nuclear reaction was the Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1)

CP-1 GOES CRITICAL
Met Lab (December 2, 1942)
Events: The Plutonium Path to the Bomb, 1942-1944
While arrangements were proceeding for the construction of full-size plutonium production reactors, critical questions remained about their basic design.

May have missed his name posted here, but Alfred Wallace discovered natural selection independently of Darwin. Also, consider that Darwin’s position 150 years ago was weaker because Mendel was still trying to figure out basic genetics, no one knew what DNA did, most of the fossil artifacts had yet to be discovered, embryology was in its infancy, no one yet knew the relationship between proteins, DNA and heredity, radioisotope dating had yet to be invented, chromosomes were not understood, even exactly what cells were was unclear in those days, mutations were unknown and on and on.

The main flaw in Darwin’s theories was his (and everyone else’s) lack of understanding of exactly what and how traits were passed on from one generation to another.

Shorter Unrepentant Geek:

Dis-belief in Evolution will not harm you as long as you work in a non-related field.

maleman on May 7, 2009 at 4:54 PM

really? would you like to tell that to all the millions of victims of the eugenics movement? Eugenics are nothing more than applied evolution..and its racist as hell…

“Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.” Stephen Jay Gould,
‘Ontogeny and Phylogeny’, Belknap-Harvard Press, pp. 27-128

and this strain of racism persists to this day…see Watson…and this from Darwin himself..

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.” (Darwin, Charles R. [English naturalist and founder of the modern theory of evolution], “The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex,” [1871], John Murray: London, Second Edition, 1922, reprint, pp.205-206)

Darwin’s cousin Galton founded the eugenics movement, even coined the term….and his sons were active in it…as was margaret sanger…and of course the eugenics policies of Hitler and the ‘master race’ were the ultimate expression of this idea…

Mutational meltdown…which is illustrated nicely in this article…

link

the biological big bang…

link

the sexes…isn’t it convenient that they somehow managed to both evolve at the same time? Dawkins called it an ‘abominable mystery’

animals like the tuatara which has the fastest rate of ‘micro’ DNA evolution and is yet a living dinosaur.

why some animals evolve…like humans…and some do not like the tuatara, the coelecanth…evolution ‘knows’ things….and saying its perfectly adapted is a tautology because the only way you know its adapted is it survives..

and how many other scientists were held in prison, even for years, for theories, discoveries and proven science that we still observe today?

thedude on May 7, 2009 at 4:54 PM

interesting that you would say that…when now its the darwinists who are the ones who sue, silence, and harass all who dare disagree…..see sternberg, gonzales, crocker…

it’s ok if you disagree.

that’s the thing about faith. it is, after all, faith. which is not science.

I consider evolution a faith and not science. you have to believe in what you cannot see, or feel, or duplicate. The fossil record does not support evolution, and you cannot take a bacteria and evolve it into a multi-cellular animal. The sequences of mutations for things like an eye are not known. Evolution is a totally materialistic theory…so somehow a molecule had to become self-replicating, and then somehow become alive and able to reproduce. and please don’t tell me OOl is not part of evolution.

Evolution is also a worldview, a religion, that purports to explain all of human behavior….its implications are clear, and Provine acknowledged:

Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.”

Provine, William B. [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], “, “Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life”, Abstract of Will Provine’s 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.

i would be really interested to know how, in what way, evolution is being disproved. i mean, i am an open-minded person and enjoy new ideas so i’m game. fill me in.

as I said before a lack of evidence in the fossil record, and in the lab…

adaptive radiation lacks empirical evidence..

link

the tree of life is wrong…

link

conserved and ultra-conserved areas of the genome…why would any area be conserved? and how would evolution know to conserve an area??

the inability of people like miller to answer the irreducable complexity argument…and telling a story doesn’t count.

Haldane’s dilemma

it’s ok if you disagree.

that’s the thing about faith. it is, after all, faith. which is not science.

I consider evolution a faith and not science. you have to believe in what you cannot see, or feel, or duplicate. The fossil record does not support evolution, and you cannot take a bacteria and evolve it into a multi-cellular animal. The sequences of mutations for things like an eye are not known. Evolution is a totally materialistic theory…so somehow a molecule had to become self-replicating, and then somehow become alive and able to reproduce. and please don’t tell me OOl is not part of evolution.

Evolution is also a worldview, a religion, that purports to explain all of human behavior….its implications are clear, and Provine acknowledged:

Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.”

Provine, William B. [Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University], “, “Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life”, Abstract of Will Provine’s 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address.

i would be really interested to know how, in what way, evolution is being disproved. i mean, i am an open-minded person and enjoy new ideas so i’m game. fill me in.

as I said before a lack of evidence in the fossil record, and in the lab…

adaptive radiation lacks empirical evidence..

link

the tree of life is wrong…

link

conserved and ultra-conserved areas of the genome…why would any area be conserved? and how would evolution know to conserve an area??

the inability of people like miller to answer the irreducable complexity argument…and telling a story doesn’t count.

Haldane’s dilemma

Mutational meltdown…which is illustrated nicely in this article…

link

the biological big bang…

link

the sexes…isn’t it convenient that they somehow managed to both evolve at the same time? Dawkins called it an ‘abominable mystery’

A huge problem with the GOP right now is the rejection of information known to be factual.

Oh, both sides are guilty of that. It’s just that the Dems tend to reject evidence that have a much bigger impact on people. Like how increased taxes inhibit and delay economic growth. Or how taxes affect everyone regardless of who pays them directly. Or how government, as an entity with little to no oversight, is much more likely to misallocate capital than the free market, which has scads of oversight.

as far as evolution… you have to ignore fossil data. you have to ignore geologic data. you have to ignore cro-magnon and homo erectus.

I don’t ignore any of this, I just doubt the conclusions drawn from them. I doubt the motivations that sometimes draw people to conclusions based on their pre-conceived notions. Just as I doubt global warming scientists who take several decades of temperature data and attempt to explain climate patterns over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.

further, i have never seen, and never felt that evolution was pushed on me in any way shape or form… global warming, different matter. that’s being pushed on everyone.

My guess is you weren’t around when it was being pushed more fervently. I majored in molecular biology in the mid 90s, and I can tell you from my experience that evolution was pushed as a foregone conclusion. A scientific consensus. No debate. It was a jarring experience to see scientists, who are supposed to be the biggest of skeptics, to accept a premise with so much conviction in the face of massive holes in evidence.

just go check creation theory for facts or flaws and don’t accept it as real until you actually prove you have evidence.

So you’re asking me to prove God exists. You’re going to be waiting for quite a while. I have no evidence. I merely have my faith. By the way, you incorrectly define creationism as a “theory”.

i mean, how you can totally be on board with a lofty claim such as creationism and yet deny what science has revealed about evolution is truly amazing.

Your choice of words is interesting here. “Deny what science has revealed about evolution”. That suggests to me that you’re starting with a concept (evolution) then trying to apply your evidence (science) to fit into a preconceived notion of what that concept is.

“Deny what science has revealed about evolution”. Substitute “faith” for science and “God” for evolution and they sound eerily similar, don’t they?

you’re not being skeptical really, just seeing it your way.

Actually, I am being skeptical. Evolution requires that we accept incomplete evidence to explain a process that we were not around for the majority of time it would take to observe. Fossil records may be incomplete or misleading. Carbon dating is limited in scope. We have only had access to genetic data for a very short amount of time when compared with the supposed age of the planet.

I’m not saying evolution isn’t what actually happened, I’m just saying that it is impossible to know. I’m saying that those who tout evolution as science tend to assume a lot of things on faith and a substantial lack of evidence.

I am assuming I am not the “jackass” you are referring to.

Hehe, no. My mind immediately went to Al Gore several years ago on some unhinged rant/speech about how the debate over global warming is over. =)

Who knows & there is no way to prove/disprove that-so we are philosophizing here.
Badger40 on May 7, 2009 at 3:04 PM

True. So why does one side of the argument forbid the other side from even having a fair hearing? I don’t hear ID people saying that evolution should not be taught in public schools. Rather it’s the evolutionists who don’t even want books to say it’s just a theory! What happened to exchange of ideas? What happened to science considering all theories that fit the data? Why is it that even the best evolutionists can’t supply proofs, but yet want to insist that no other theory has validity? You people who decry the Fairness Doctrine or the Global Warming hoax have can’t see it’s the same thing going on?
The left needs Christianity out of the way because it hinders their progress to pervert the minds of the people and take control. But conservatives? Are we afraid of the free exchange of ideas?

TheMightyMonarch on May 7, 2009 at 5:17 PM

dude, again, please wow… scientists don’t trust science… they check it. that’s what they have to do to be sure of their findings.

just go check creation theory for facts or flaws and don’t accept it as real until you actually prove you have evidence. i mean, how you can totally be on board with a lofty claim such as creationism and yet deny what science has revealed about evolution is truly amazing.

you’re not being skeptical really, just seeing it your way.

cool, it’s all good.

You didn’t really read what I wrote did you? Or do you honestly think the average chemist is reciting the Origin of Species to himself as he works?

Whatever man. By all means continue the convenient delusion of complete and utter rationality. I’m sure it’s terribly comforting. Not terribly logically consistent for a self proclaimed barely evolved primate, but a nice way to set oneself up as superior to a sizable portion of the planet.

TheUnrepentantGeek on May 7, 2009 at 5:35 PM

Actually, don’t listen to me. I denounce myself.

>it’s an outstanding litmus test for rationality on science and technology

Ding! Ding! Ding! A huge problem with the GOP right now is the rejection of information known to be factual.

maleman on May 7, 2009 at 4:54 PM

…

You didn’t really read what I wrote did you? Or do you honestly think the average chemist is reciting the Origin of Species to himself as he works?

Whatever man. By all means continue the convenient delusion of complete and utter rationality. I’m sure it’s terribly comforting. Not terribly logically consistent for a self proclaimed barely evolved primate, but a nice way to set oneself up as superior to a sizable portion of the planet.

TheMightyMonarch on May 7, 2009 at 5:05 PM

duuude… seriously? i really shouldn’t laugh, you are entitled to your point of view. let it be known, for the record, that i don’t hate you and i don’t think you’re not very intelligent or that there should be some whacky attacks against you. that’s a lefty thing and i’m not into it.

i have already commented on the difference between evolution and global warming. one of the biggest problems about global warming, as a scientific theory, is that it is advanced by a beleaguered leftist politician. most science really isn’t championed by such an obvious political agenda, but yes, i suppose it would be possible that there could be some influence in other areas of science if there’s such a great influence in global warming.

and yes, skepticism is good. OH LORD, thank God for skepticism. i’m all for it and pride myself as one, in fact… i will not, however, be skeptical of science because i already have a pre-conceived notion. I AM OPEN to any possibility, but i will be skeptical of it until is see proof. i will NOT fight away real science because i cling to a belief.

further, i have never seen, and never felt that evolution was pushed on me in any way shape or form… global warming, different matter. that’s being pushed on everyone.

as far as evolution… you have to ignore fossil data. you have to ignore geologic data. you have to ignore cro-magnon and homo erectus. you have to ignore how there were simple species of animals early on, then more complex, and further still, until now. there’s just so much proven science that you literally have to ignore it all to remain a pure creationist. and for that, i just cannot go there with you.

by the way, scientists are, and have been combing over millions upon billions of years of evidence gleaned from the fossil record over vast periods of geologic time. so yes, they are making observations, combing over millions of years… respectively, they are observing what the fossil record is showing them and checking and re-checking the evidence. not believing it first, then looking for evidence. (which is what many do with global warming as well)

merely by being a creationist, you have accepted that your belief will not be based on any evidence you find, but on your own personal beliefs.

and you, sir, are entitled to that.

this is so funny to me. i am such an active conservative. i try to talk about what conservatism means to people whenever i can, put down false beliefs and assumptions. talk about about freedoms and liberty and the right to be successful in life… i never thought i’d be arguing this point with other conservatives.

how about being a skeptic of creationism?
peace.

Thirdly, I don’t see evolution as a theory to be tested. There is no rational way to prove as much beyond some instances of natural selection, changes in microbial organisms (they’re one of the few forms of life where several generations can be observed over a relatively short period of time), and carbon dating (which has its own limitations).

TheMightyMonarch on May 7, 2009 at 5:17 PM

These are things you ‘believe’.
These are opinions. But that doesn’t always make your assertions true.
Mine, either.
Carbon dating has limitations-age limitations.
You don’t use a ruler to take your temperature.
Carbon dating is usable for certain purposes & not others.

TheMightyMonarch on May 7, 2009 at 5:05 PM

I am assuming I am not the “jackass” you are referring to.

Hell, we’re even calling into questions things we thought we knew about the cosmos. The speed of light is fixed? Hmm….maybe not. Space is warped and might be giving us wrong ideas about distances between stars and galaxies? Guess things are a little more chaotic and messy than we thought.

Maybe so-but maybe not. There is probably order within the chaos, we just haven’t recognized it yet.

Sorry, but no…until we can send scientists back in time and monitor millions of species changing over billions of years…evolution remains an unprovable idea.

That is not always necessary to prove/disprove something.
I don’t have to listen to you heart rate for a whole day to measure it.
I don’t have to watch a river deposit sediment for a whole year every day to calculate its rate of annual deposition.

Similarly with global warming, scientists are taking climate data on the scale of decades and attempting to predict climate patterns best measured on the scale of eons. It’s just bad science.

I’m not a AGW supporter, but taking this route does not always produce the ‘bad science’ you are alluding to.
Just bcs scientists can’t always produce inarguable results does not mean they are doing ‘bad science’.
Scientific knowledge is a growing body of work. The hypotheses & theories are ever changing & even our understanding of a scientific law can change due to more & more accurate knowledge &/or advance technology.

why is evolution controversial? why is this scientific research, based on factual evidence, so hard to accept?

At one point it was seen as a direct contradiction of the Bible’s account of creation. Some used evolution to try and disprove God (as if such a thing was possible).

My skepticism comes from several fronts. First, man is imperfect. Sometimes we are so clouded on what we think is true that we will skew the evidence to fit our point of view. Sometimes people will even go to the lengths of falsifying the evidence because they either let their belief cloud their reason or they are under pressure from others to produce a desired result.

And yes, I believe this happens on both sides of any argument.

Secondly, science has always been at risk of being politicized. Once it has that taint on it I stop trusting the science and start looking to see who benefits or profits most from the results.

Thirdly, I don’t see evolution as a theory to be tested. There is no rational way to prove as much beyond some instances of natural selection, changes in microbial organisms (they’re one of the few forms of life where several generations can be observed over a relatively short period of time), and carbon dating (which has its own limitations).