The Debating Society
Hobbies & Interests
A place where ModDB members can debate civilly, and learn from each other's views.
Science
Post a comment
Description
So though I should try to add some life to this group and this video appeared in my sub box on YouTube so I thought it would be perfect to revive this group a bit:D
Oh and here's the YouTube link incase moddb decides to not work for you: Youtube.com
I'm going to save myself from a seven minute onslaught of facepalming and get to the point.
Anything that is not culture or harmless subjective artistic opinion is not the prerogative of the scientific method, aka science. Anything else is subject to hypothesis, testing, scrutiny, and inevitably consensus until new contradicting evidence. This is involved in everything from clothing, buildings, toothbrushes, ships, human resource systems, and even history. The computer you are now using was made by both scientific discoveries and electronic engineers.
If you want to toss the scientific method out the window to think your special that is your prerogative, not reality's. It doesn't care much for human or anything else's opinion for that matter.
I think you might want to watch the video since you're pointing at the wrong ideas. This video isn't about tossing out the scientific method. (I named it science since I'm awful at making names and it's sort of "science" related)
Its a creationist video, so his comment is accurate. This video is not about science, its about religious faith and how it should take place in school, acording to that idiot in the video. So yes, its a seven minute onslaught of facepalming if you watch it with an open mind.
That guy who thought teaching creation is child abuse is clearly butthurt and infringing on the rights of parents and teachers who would choose to teach kids the theory of creation.
Maybe it stems from me seeing these types of things so often. But i'm honestly just very apathetic about this type of thing now. I will say this: no where else in the world (that i know of) do they teach creationism in public school, and every country that does this had a better education system than the US. Draw whatever conclusions you want from that.
Also from what I understand most creationists home school their children (in the US), why not just let them teach evolution and not creation in schools and then have the parents teach creationism at home? Or perhaps just home school the child? Not to mention if you go to church, thats enough religious teaching for the child to make an informed decision i would assume (church + parents teaching the child about creation). I don't think this needs to be put in schools (especially science classes) and it isn't in every modern country except for the US. Bizarre.
This video isn't exactly about teaching creation OR evolution it's about teaching the truth even if it doesn't agree with what evolution wants it to be.
If it doesnt agree "with what evolution wants it to be", how can it be the truth? The theory of evolution is built up by people who seek the truth and over 150 years, the muntain of evidence needs much stronger evidence to refute it - in other words, God have to show up and demonstrate how he did it. And we both know he wont, so how could faith be the truth?
If you understand the concept of Natural Selection you cannot isolate it from the conecpt of Evolution and I think it losses all it's meaning when you implement it to Creatonism, he's almost changing the whole concept of Natural Selection to be honest.
Let's suppose that one animal developes a more complex brain allowing him to think and learn twice as fast, if this improves the chance of the animal of surviving (I guess we all agree that it would) then this characteristic will be passed on the next generations and help them survive longer, give Natural Selection some time and it will be implemented into the whole species, and the species will now have more chances of survive or as Dawkins says: better "survival machines", this is from an Evolutionary view, of course.
From a Creationist view you would have a very unbalanced system, I'll take the guy's example, let's suppose there's a climate change, and we have two random groups of animal, species A and species B, obviusly not all species will be affected by the climate change the same way, let's suppose A is affected more by it than B, therefore B has more chance of surviving than A, also let's suppose that B has A in it's diet, this would lead A into extintion for many reasons, even if a small group of it manages to adapt to the climate change, A will losse a BIG part of it's population since it's not adapted the last ones that will die with be the samll group that adapted, these will be either killed by B (since B is survives more than A) and other predators, illnesses, etc., now imagine if this happens to all species in a certain area this would lead to a massive extintion of species, the same would happen if there isn't any climate change, just in a slower rate. So no it's not "brilliantly engineered by God", again, if Natural Selection doesn't have Evolution then it losses all it's meaning.
Okay so how did the rules for natural selection come into place? Take Conway's Game of Life for example. It looks random and without purpose but the rules for it didn't randomly appear; Conway wrote them.
So if it's evolution that species go extinct why is there a endangered species list with the purpose of trying to save those species? My point is that this causes a bit of a contradiction for evolutionists, no? Lastly IT WAS brilliantly engineered by God. Only problem was that God gave humans free will and allowed us to do whatever we want. Naturally we ruined this world. Climate change is most likely our doing. If you were God would you stop the damage that humanity is causing or would you let them learn from their mistakes so that they wouldn't try doing it again. I personally think a "get out of jail" card would destroy the purpose of free will.
"Okay so how did the rules for natural selection come into place?"
I would say that it's rules are laws of nature, of course, you will be asking yourself "but who wrote the laws" I think we don't know enough of the Universe to answer these kind of questions, but again, this doesn't mean we should start believing in Gods.
"So if it's evolution that species go extinct why is there a endangered species list with the purpose of trying to save those species?"
My English sucks sometimes but are you saying that Evolution is what causes species to go extinct? If you did, then I think you didn't get what I said in my previous comment, I said that Natural Selection without Evolution would lead to extintion.
Why are there endangered species? Because of us.
"Naturally we ruined this world. Climate change is most likely our doing."
Yup, this is mostly what is causing endangered species to appear (my example above about the climate change is also supposing that the climate change isn't deadly enough to kill all A before it adapts) but you also have to think about how much we hunt some species and the other things that threaten these species.
" Lastly IT WAS brilliantly engineered by God. Only problem was that God gave humans free will and allowed us to do whatever we want."
Evolution and Natural Selection are not things that you can control, you can't make the gene that makes people's eyes blue cease to exist except if you force all humans to not mate with people with blue eyes, it's not like you can control heredity either, my point is, we are not the ones that control how common a trait is.
I'll continue my comment below
"If you were God would you stop the damage that humanity is causing or would you let them learn from their mistakes so that they wouldn't try doing it again."
To be honest, neither, my faith in humanity is too little to imagine a bright future for our civilisation, if I stop the damage humanity caused they would do it again, if I let them "learn" from their mistakes they would do it again, I think if we don't colonize Mars (which is something I doubt because only a few people are worrying about this) we will all be in a global war for resources sooner or later. If only society were not so ignorant and stupid... seriously, only a few people have a real intereset in Science, 90% of the people thinks that you must have a profession that gives you a good income and then you will be able to live a happy life, everybody in my classroom only cares about butts and tits, some have told me that they will go to certain universities just because of the women that are there -_-, not because of the level of education... no body really cares about something worth thinking or knowing anymore.
1. fair enough.
2. sorry about not being clear enough, I meant that if natural selection is a part of evolution then why are so many people against it? Sure it's most our doing but then if the poor frogs in the nearby pond can't adapt to the pollution that a nearby factory produces then they should die right? At least that's the general message that I see evolution and natural selection presenting.
3. totally agree!
4. Yes your right we cannot control how common a trait is although that wasn't my point. My point was in response to your species A and B example. If we weren't causing climate change, destroying A's habitat, and possibly even hunting them they would be perfectly fine. It would help if you were responding to my points in order:D
5. I agree with you. God likely tried helping us in the past, and he also withdrew from this world. In general how could someone avoid repeating the past if they don't know it? Even when people are aware of what happened in the past they still repeat the worst bit of it:( Society in general is stupid (part of the reason why I only went outside to society about twice so far this summer) I would face desk so hard if someone told me their reason for going to a university was just to see a few females. I personally would love to have a job that wouldn't just be for paying the bills but would actually aid science, the planet or even our terrible society. I guess the problem with society is that most people just think about themselves:( It's so self centered and even though there are so many intelligent people out there there are still a lot of ignorant and stupid individuals. But then if everyone was like John Carmack who would be the work force? Until robots become reliable and good enough we need the average ignorant fool.
Uh, what? Perhaps in human evolution, as we've rarely been concerned with what physical traits huamnity develops. Still, mutation and environmental adaption has been manipulated by animal breeders for thousands of years.
While I understand the point he is trying to make, he's also ignoring the fact that creationism requires just as much faith as belief the theory of abiogenesis. It's perfectly fine and great to question what one perceives to be dogma, but don't replace it with something that requires just as much blind belief. Teach kids the basics that are unquestionably observable (phyiscs, laws of gravity, basic evolution, etc), and let them come up with their own conclusions. So long as they're not using their beliefs as some magical immunity shield, there's nothing to worry about.
At the same time, his point should not be ignored. There's a lot of things that people pass off as "science" that's just plain-old estimation and guesswork. I'm not just referring to abiogenessis, you'll find this sort of passive ignoring of important details everywhere in the fields of medicine, phyiscs, chemistry, and chemistry. There's a huge difference between being a religious fanatic and pointing out dogmatic bull***t when you see it.
To Elffriend: First off, you're not really making a lot sense here. To be honest, there isn't really anything in the Bible that rules out evolution. The creation story was a poem for one, anyone who's studied Jewish literature can tell you that. Secondly, if you really start to get technical, the sun wasn't created until the third day according to Genesis, so there wouldn't have been any human concept of time before that. That our ancestors were biologically different is undeniable. Even in the Medieval Ages, people were generally much shorter than they are now. It doesn't mean our ancestors were any less intelligent or human than we are, it just means that a species will change and adapt over time.