Happy Darwin year everyone!

[Winstonm]

you just fail to understand that you cannot even prove that gravitation is not a pure luck phenomemon that can stop working at any time.

 

Franz Kafka was God? I didn't know.

 

I am certainly glad, then, that I have not as yet transformed in my bed into a monstrous vermin - although I did dream last night that I was simply floating, hovering above my sheets as if some great and unexplained universal change had occured while I slept and altered my life forever....along with my weight....

[Fluffy]

But not in the God that's described in the Bible, the one that created the world in 7 days about 6,000 years ago.

Old testament might be true, or not true, but if it was, it is just a human interpretation of what God said, a human who had no knowledge (or words) to understand much of what he was seeing/being told. Taking Bible literarilly doesn't work very well.

[P_Marlowe]

I am just angry about another pro-atheism topic

This is not a pro-atheism topic. It's pro Darwinism. You can easily appreciate science and believe in God at the same time.

But not in the God that's described in the Bible, the one that created the world in 7 days about 6,000 years ago.

There are at least to stories "How the world was created" described in the

bible, they differ.

And of course even if you ignore this, there are lots of "contradictions",

Kain married someone in the land No, but whom? Assuming Adam and Eve

were the only person created by god, to my knowledge there are no other

persons mentioned in the bible, but I may be wrong, they gave birth to Abel

and Kain, Kain killed Abel, fine, but which woman got married to Kain?

And even if the Bible does not menation any sisters of Abel, does one really

believe he married a blood sister?

 

I have read once, that Jew read the holy text in a certain way:

they are not interested in the answer to the question: did this happen, no,

they are interested in the answer of the question, what does the text tell

me for my current day to day live.

 

With kind regards

Marlowe

 

PS: If you like literature, you may like the retelling of the first bible chapters

by Thomas Mann, you can find it at the beginnin of "Josephus and his Brothers",

my mother told, if you want to start reading Thomas Mann, "Josefus" would be

a good start.

But I guess you need to like the style, the style is comparable to Henry James,

dont ask me how often I tried to read a book written by James from A to Z,

usually I give up after 40-50 pages.

[kenberg]

But not in the God that's described in the Bible, the one that created the world in 7 days about 6,000 years ago.

Old testament might be true, or not true, but if it was, it is just a human interpretation of what God said, a human who had no knowledge (or words) to understand much of what he was seeing/being told. Taking Bible literarilly doesn't work very well.

On this we agree. The people who are causing so much trouble in the schools do not agree.

[Gerben42]

Old testament might be true, or not true, but if it was, it is just a human interpretation of what God said, a human who had no knowledge (or words) to understand much of what he was seeing/being told. Taking Bible literarilly doesn't work very well.

 

I like this statement a lot, it shows that you have given it serious thought. And that's what I like in people. Thanks, Gonzalo :P

 

It's possible to give religious beliefs serious thought and come to different conclusions. That's why they are beliefs. And if you believe something different than I, that's fine with me.

 

But when you've never thought about it and just believe what you've been told, is it really worth believing? Because this means that had you been told something else, you would really believe that instead!

[barmar]

And if you believe something different than I, that's fine with me.

Unless they impinge on my life. For instance, lawmakers who allow their beliefs to influence the laws they pass, or school boards who want curricula to reflect their beliefs.

[Fluffy]

Old testament might be true, or not true, but if it was, it is just a human interpretation of what God said, a human who had no knowledge (or words) to understand much of what he was seeing/being told. Taking Bible literarilly doesn't work very well.

I like this statement a lot, it shows that you have given it serious thought. And that's what I like in people. Thanks, Gonzalo B)

Before firmly* beliving in God, I spent a lot of nights thinking on the scientific way: What if god didn't exist?. And looking for a contradiction. I found a couple that are a contradiction to me, but probably they are not to you, I think I tried to explain one of them in the forums.

 

Anyway, thinking that way, I aproached the dark side, and it was dangerous!, at some point I was almost convinced the other way.

 

*: this is not true, I haven't yet managed to completelly expell the other option out of my head, and I often find myself thinking: what if actually....

[mycroft]

Jesus (it is said) taught in parables. He told stories. The stories may or may not have been true, but the point they made was.

 

He did that because it was an accepted way of teaching, in Jewish culture. It's called "speaking the language your audience understands". That's also why there are so many references to the Hebrew Scriptures - his listeners are going to get it, and all the context associated with the reference, the way you or I would get a reference to preempting my friend's (phone) call.

 

A fair amount of the Pentateuch - at least the history sections - is allegory. Story. Myth. That doesn't, in and of itself, stop it from being true, just because it didn't happen exactly as the words say. It could even be, for a wandering tribe learning to live in a strange, oppressive land 4000 years ago, more "true" than The Actual Truth (after all, what's more true: potentially exaggerated history of a living race, or people armed with Quantum Mechanics, but who dies from a food-borne disease?)

 

The idea of literalism is a Western European thing, almost uniquely; and it has produced a lot of good things (among them, modern, experimental Science). It has also produced an occasional inability to understand non-literal teaching. I wonder if some of these Bible literalists would attempt to convict Swift of conspiracy to commit cannibalism.

 

I guess all of this (from a Scientist who is also a Christian, as are/were, strangely enough, many many famous Scientists past and present) is saying that some of us are capable seeing the Truth that can be proved (or more correctly, can be disproved but hasn't), the Truth that is, but is not testable by Science, and the Truth told by tales, or history, or spiritualism, or...

[kenberg]

The thread started with schools, and let me come back to that.

 

I am, myself, just fine with teachers having beliefs that they express.

 

My biology teacher believed that color blindness was the result of children not being correctly taught their colors. I am not making this up.

 

One of my English teachers believed that many well regarded writers, Hemingway for example, just wrote trash. "Some people think it is good" she told us. So back to reading Shelley. And Millay.

 

My chemistry teacher believed that colds were caused by emotional stress, without any contact with germs.

 

My civics teacher explained to us that in his view no unmarried woman is completely happy engaging in sex.

 

My Spanish teacher was really quite unusual and used to talk to us of her days in Paris. It seems she had a very good time.

 

OK, so a teacher thinks evolution is crap. I have no problem with him/her saying so, but I would expect him to teach the youngsters the essence of the ideas and to acknowledge that, while debates flourish in all science, the general concept that humans are an evolutionary development from earlier life forms is really universally (close enough for government work anyway) accepted in the scientific community.

 

Kids catch on. Long before "Don't trust anyone over thirty" was a motto, I realized that not everything you were told by adult authority figures was true. To help sorting out truth from propaganda, I am fine with teachers expressing their own views as long as they make it clear that these are their own views.

[PassedOut]

My biology teacher believed that color blindness was the result of children not being correctly taught their colors. I am not making this up.

 

One of my English teachers believed that many well regarded writers, Hemingway for example, just wrote trash. "Some people think it is good" she told us. So back to reading Shelley. And Millay.

 

My chemistry teacher believed that colds were caused by emotional stress, without any contact with germs.

Your schools were a lot like mine.

 

One of my high school teachers (before the lunar landing) insisted that the "dark side of the moon" never received sunshine and was covered with mountains of ice. I got on his ***** list for (among other things) asking him then to diagram an eclipse of the sun.

 

And that was one of many, many teacher stupidities I witnessed. I don't remember very many times that those opinions were presented as anything other than facts.

[Elianna]

One of my fellow math teachers believes that after calculating expectation of what would be the result of a gamble, one must THEN compare it to what one could lose in order to decide whether to proceed. (This was brought up in discussing whether we should teach students to take a guess on the SAT after eliminating at least one answer as impossible.)

 

Another teacher (who no longer works there) told students that gold was formed in volcanoes. (She was an English teacher and they were reading Call of the Wild.)

 

I recently had students who told me that a Jr. High science teacher taught them that the reason that Albert Einstein was the smartest man ever is that he used 9% of his brain, while other people use 7%.

 

Anyway, I teach science at an Orthodox Jewish girls' high school. We teach evolution. In their judaic studies classes, they learn that the Bible is literal truth. How do we reconcile these? Well, I usually leave that for the JS staff, but before I get to this section in Biology, I make the following two statements (out of a handbook about issues in science published by the Orthodox Union):

 

1) Religion is about believing certain truths, not proving them. Just science is about an ordered set of beliefs that must be proven. They do not relate to each other. One cannot prove religion scientifically, that is the essence of religion. One should not believe in science religiously, that is the essence of science.

 

2) An analogy: "If G-d creates a 30 year-old man, how old is he, and how long has he been alive?"

 

Everything else I leave up to their Judaic Studies teachers. Like the question of why G-d would go to the trouble to create bones of creatures that never existed. I don't lead them to the question, but I definitely don't address it.

[Codo]

1) Religion is about believing certain truths, not proving them. Just science is about an ordered set of beliefs that must be proven. They do not relate to each other. One cannot prove religion scientifically, that is the essence of religion. One should not believe in science religiously, that is the essence of science.

 

2) An analogy: "If G-d creates a 30 year-old man, how old is he, and how long has he been alive?"

These are two of the nicest statements I ever read, thanks for sharing them.

 

I heard a lot of funny stories about teachers telling terrible things to their students here. I have some stories about my teachers myself.

But it is true for anybody I know that we sometimes tell others our opinions as facts. And unluckily these opinions are sometimes false.

At least the opinions from anybody else of course. Not mine. B)

[kenberg]

We do all have opinions, not all of which will survive when looked at critically. It is vital to get young people to think critically even if they do not always come to the accepted truth. My civics teacher, for example, gets high marks from me for bringing up, in the mid-fifties, a discussion of the emotional content of sex. Unfortunately from the male student's viewpoint none of the girls spoke up to explain that she was perfectly happy having sex. But this possibility could be explored later. If one takes the larger view that he was saying that engaging in sex has emotional consequences, I would say he was right on target.

 

And you could say that my English teachers point could be that just because an author is regarded as good it does not follow that we all must agree. This is useful also. When it comes to Byron and Shelley, I very much agree.

 

As mentioned, my biology teacher was simply an idiot. So we learn there are idiots in the world. My chemistry teacher was definitely not an idiot although he had some unusual ideas.

 

The fundamental point about science that I think should be gotten across to all students is that science is self-correcting. The estimated age of the universe has changed significantly during my lifetime. Possibly it will be revised again, but it is really a very safe bet that the revision will not place the age at 5000 years. Various evolutionary ideas compete for acceptance. Again views will change, but the creation of Eve from Adam's rib is not apt to be a winner.

 

If the guy who fixes my car doubts that evolution is a correct explanation of man's existence, we can live with that. But he is a citizen and a voter, and it would be very good if he had a general understanding of how science progresses. Facts, model building, conceptual frameworks, checking facts against models, revising views in the light of new evidence. That's how it's done and to stick dogmatically with religious claims (or other ideological claims) that don't hold up under scientific examination is a dangerous approach in a dangerous world. If that message comes through then he can have a few facts wrong, as no doubt I do myself.

[ASkolnick]

Although I do like Elianna's approach, I think it is very difficult, at least with evolution, to keep them mutually exclusive. However, the good news is, I don't think it has to be mutually exclusive. Remember, Clarence Darrow in a famous court case was able to use the Bible to prove evolution by interpreting the Bible not as literally as most religion does. A "day" representing an era, etc.

 

The funny thing about the doctrine of "Separation of Church and State" is:

 

Although it was suggested in a letter, there is no specific clause of Separation of Church and State, it was an interpretation made by the Establishment Clause. The government violates this all the time.

 

In our courts, we swear on a bible.

On our money it says "In G-d we trust". But my favorite saying I got from a bumper sticker "In G-d We Trust, all others pay cash."

The pledge of allegiance in school, now uses Under God, although it didn't use to.

 

But one of the things I would like a school being for my son and daughter is to be open and discuss people's different ideas and leave it up to their own interpretation.

 

Problems with Science: Many science things are suggested as fact instead of theory, until somebody disproves them.

Problem with Religion: There is no evolution of information once new information comes to light. For example, being Jewish, I think Kashrut laws were a great idea prior to refrigeration, now I don't think they are necessary.

[Winstonm]

But one of the things I would like a school being for my son and daughter is to be open and discuss people's different ideas and leave it up to their own interpretation

 

Should the schools teach Bhuddism, Scientology, and Astrology? Will those be taught in religion class, philosophy class, or science class?

[helene_t]

Problems with Science: Many science things are suggested as fact instead of theory, until somebody disproves them.

Although this may wary between scientific disciplines, in general I think it's a problem with popularization of science. Scientists like to speak in vague terms and keep the doors open for all kind of alternative ideas, but journalists will press for bold and easy-to-digest stories. So when one scientist in one month is quoted for saying that the universe is infinite or that potatoes are bad for your health and another scientist says the opposite next month, it is understandable if readers get the impression that facts are only facts for now. But in that case, those "facts" have probably never been considered facts by most scientists.

 

Should the schools teach Bhuddism, Scientology, and Astrology? Will those be taught in religion class, philosophy class, or science class?

We learned about Buddhism and Scientology in Religion class. Astrology in ancient history class.

[barmar]

The idea of literalism is a Western European thing, almost uniquely; and it has produced a lot of good things (among them, modern, experimental Science). It has also produced an occasional inability to understand non-literal teaching. I wonder if some of these Bible literalists would attempt to convict Swift of conspiracy to commit cannibalism.

Swift never claimed that his books were a guideline for how to live your life. It was clear that they were satire and fiction.

 

The problem with relativism when applied to the Bible is that it results in a circularity. The Bible is supposed to be where you learn ethics and morality from. But if you have to interpret the Bible's allegories and mythology, what's the basis for your interpretation? You can't interpret it in terms of your own moral code, because that's precisely what you're trying to learn.

 

For instance, the Bible teaches that it's proper for a husband to have children with a slave if his wife barren. Ignoring the issue of slavery itself, this was probably good advice thousands of years ago, when having lots of children was necessary to survival. Now it would be considered abhorent by most. But the Bible hasn't changed, society has.

 

If the Bible can be reinterpreted it can be interpreted as almost anything, and becomes practically meaningless. What's the point of saying that the Earth was created in 7 days if days can mean weeks, years, millenia, etc.? If "days" can mean "years", then can't "love" (as in "Love thy neighbor") mean "despise"?

[PassedOut]

It seems that religious people are fighting back against the notion that they have some strange duty to ignore the reality of evolution: A very merry Darwin Day

 

Zimmerman felt it was necessary to take the issue out of the framework of creationists vs. secular scientists who both tended to portray science and religion as incompatible. He sees these caricatures as misrepresentative.

 

"The fight doesn't seem to be between religion and science as much as it is between religion and religion."

 

With that in mind, Zimmerman created the Clergy Letter Project in 2004. More than 12,000 clergy have signed the declaration affirming that a person of faith does not have to choose between belief in God or evolution.

 

"I thought if I could get 10,000 Christian clergy members saying belief in evolution does not compromise their faith in any way, I could change the nature of the controversy in this country."

 

But little press came of the effort. "I had a choice at this point, either let the whole thing drop or declare a national holiday," Zimmerman says. "Oddly enough it worked. On very short notice we had hundreds of congregations participating."

 

The first Evolution Sunday occurred in 2006. By 2007, lectures and sermons were presented to more than 600 congregations across the United States and five other countries. In 2008, participation from a wider range of faith traditions prompted the name change to Evolution Weekend. More than 800 congregations from 10 countries took part last year.

For my part, it's good to see that many folks understand that they can keep the comfort they receive from religion without putting on blinders.

[y66]

February 12, 2009

OLIVIA JUDSON

London

 

MY fellow primates, 200 years ago today, Charles Darwin was born. Please join me in wishing him happy birthday!

 

Unlike many members of the human species, Darwin makes an easy hero. His achievements were prodigious; his science, meticulous. His work transformed our understanding of the planet and of ourselves.

 

At the same time, he was a humane, gentle, decent man, a loving husband and father, and a loyal friend. Judging by his letters, he was also sometimes quite funny. He was, in other words, one of those rare beings, as likeable as he was impressive.

 

For example, after his marriage, Darwin worked at home, and his children (of the 10 he fathered, seven survived to adulthood) remembered playing in his study. Later, one of his sons recounted how, after an argument, his father came up to his room, sat on his bed, and apologized for losing his temper. And although often painted as a recluse, Darwin served as a local magistrate, meting out justice in his dining room.

 

Moreover, while many of his contemporaries approved of slavery, Darwin did not. He came from a family of ardent abolitionists, and he was revolted by what he saw in slave countries: “Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have stayed in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal .... It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.”

 

He practiced a kind of ideal, dream-like science. He examined the minutiae of nature — shells of barnacles, pistils of flowers — but worked on grand themes. He corresponded with lofty men of learning, but also with farmers and pigeon breeders. He observed, questioned, experimented, constantly testing his ideas.

 

Could plants from the mainland colonize a newly formed island? If so, they would need a way to get there. Could they survive in the ocean? To find out, he immersed seeds in salt water for weeks, then planted them to see how many could sprout. He reported, for example, that “an asparagus plant with ripe berries floated for 23 days, when dried it floated for 85 days, and the seeds afterwards germinated.” The Atlantic current moved at 33 nautical miles a day; he figured that would take a seed more than 1,300 miles in 42 days. Yes, seeds could travel by sea.

 

He published important work on subjects as diverse as the biology of carnivorous plants, barnacles, earthworms and the formation of coral reefs. He wrote a travelogue, “The Voyage of the Beagle,” that was an immediate best seller and remains a classic of its kind. And as if that was not enough, he discovered two major forces in evolution — natural selection and sexual selection — and wrote three radical scientific masterpieces, “On the Origin of Species” (1859), “The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex” (1871) and “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals” (1872).

 

The “Origin,” of course, is what he is best known for. This volume, colossal in scope yet minutely detailed, laid the foundations of modern biology. Here, Darwin presented extensive and compelling evidence that all living beings — including humans — have evolved from a common ancestor, and that natural selection is the chief force driving evolutionary change. Sexual selection, he argued, was an additional force, responsible for spectacular features like the tail feathers of peacocks that are useless for (or even detrimental to) survival but essential for seduction.

 

Before the “Origin,” similarities and differences between species were mere curiosities; questions as to why a certain plant is succulent like a cactus or deciduous like a maple could be answered only, “Because.” Biology itself was nothing more than a vast exercise in catalog and description. After the “Origin,” all organisms became connected, part of the same, profoundly ancient, family tree. Similarities and differences became comprehensible and explicable. In short, Darwin gave us a framework for asking questions about the natural world, and about ourselves.

 

He was not right about everything. How could he have been? Famously, he didn’t know how genetics works; as for DNA — well, the structure of the molecule wasn’t discovered until 1953. So today’s view of evolution is much more nuanced than his. We have incorporated genetics, and expanded and refined our understanding of natural selection, and of the other forces in evolution.

 

But what is astonishing is how much Darwin did know, and how far he saw. His imagination told him, for example, that many female animals have a sense of beauty — that they like to mate with the most beautiful males. For this he was ridiculed. But we know that he was right. Still more impressive: he was not afraid to apply his ideas to humans. He thought that natural selection had operated on us, just as it had on fruit flies and centipedes.

 

As we delve into DNA sequences, we can see natural selection acting at the level of genes. Our genes hold evidence of our intimate associations with other beings, from cows to malaria parasites and grains. The latest research allows us to trace the genetic changes that differentiate us from our primate cousins, and shows that large parts of the human genome bear the stamp of evolution by means of natural selection.

 

I think Darwin would have been pleased. But not surprised.

[PassedOut]

More good news: Scientists in Germany Draft Neanderthal Genome

 

Archaeologists have long debated whether or not Neanderthals could speak, and have eagerly awaited Dr. Pääbo’s analysis of the Neanderthal FOXP2, a gene essential for language. Modern humans have two changes in FOXP2 that are not found in chimpanzees, and that presumably evolved to make possible the faculty of speech.

 

Dr. Pääbo said Thursday that Neanderthals have the same two changes in their version of the FOXP2 gene, which leaves open the possibility that they could speak. However, many other genes are involved in the speech faculty, so it is too early to say that conversation with Neanderthals would have been possible.

 

Dr. Pääbo said he would be publishing an article on his findings in the next few months. Usual scientific practice is not to make big claims until the article supporting the claims is available for other scientists to critique. However, the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birthday was mentioned during the news conference as an appropriate occasion for the announcement.

Wonder what Neanderthals would say!

[kenberg]

Maybe they had FOXP2 News

[PassedOut]

LOL. Probably gave opinions...

[kenberg]

Perhaps Darwin's birthday leads to a little reflection.

 

I think that all the hoopla about Intelligent Design and the threat that it poses to scientific teaching is a great deal of ado over very little. I was in high school more than fifty years ago and no one fretted about evolution. My kids were not taught any version of creationism, same with my grandchildren. Most of us have probably seen Inherit the Wind. The Scopes trial was more than 80 years ago, the film is not very good history, and kids don't pay all that much attention to what teachers say anyway. Kids need to learn more about science, more about history, more about civics, more about a lot of things than they are currently learning. More music, art and physical education also, in my opinion. That's where the real crisis lies.

 

In my schooldays, the big concern was that some comsymp would slip in some commie propaganda. Now the worry is that some creationist will slip in some ID. Not happening anywhere that I have seen, and kids are a good deal less gullible than these worrywarts suppose. Anyway, a little experience with recognizing crap when it is set in front of them can be useful preparation for life.

[PassedOut]

On Saturday the Wall Street Journal published short point-counterpoint essays by theologian Karen Armstrong and scientist Richard Dawkins on the question "Where does evolution leave God?": Man vs. God

 

Armstrong opines that the conflict between religion and science stems from the relatively recent modification of religion from its figurative roots into a literalness intended to mimic science:

 

Symbolism was essential to premodern religion, because it was only possible to speak about the ultimate reality—God, Tao, Brahman or Nirvana—analogically, since it lay beyond the reach of words. Jews and Christians both developed audaciously innovative and figurative methods of reading the Bible, and every statement of the Quran is called an ayah ("parable"). St Augustine (354-430), a major authority for both Catholics and Protestants, insisted that if a biblical text contradicted reputable science, it must be interpreted allegorically. This remained standard practice in the West until the 17th century, when in an effort to emulate the exact scientific method, Christians began to read scripture with a literalness that is without parallel in religious history.

Dawkins argues that moving god back into the figurative arena won't settle the matter:

 

Now, there is a certain class of sophisticated modern theologian who will say something like this: "Good heavens, of course we are not so naive or simplistic as to care whether God exists. Existence is such a 19th-century preoccupation! It doesn't matter whether God exists in a scientific sense. What matters is whether he exists for you or for me. If God is real for you, who cares whether science has made him redundant? Such arrogance! Such elitism."

 

Well, if that's what floats your canoe, you'll be paddling it up a very lonely creek. The mainstream belief of the world's peoples is very clear. They believe in God, and that means they believe he exists in objective reality, just as surely as the Rock of Gibraltar exists. If sophisticated theologians or postmodern relativists think they are rescuing God from the redundancy scrap-heap by downplaying the importance of existence, they should think again. Tell the congregation of a church or mosque that existence is too vulgar an attribute to fasten onto their God, and they will brand you an atheist. They'll be right.

I found it interesting to read this juxtaposition of two advocates of opposite beliefs, both presenting their strongest arguments in well-written pieces, so I thought that others who've posted on this might enjoy the WSJ piece too.

[MattieShoe]

One of my gripes in elementary and high school was the way American history was taught. In September we started with the Pilgrims. By June we had gone through the Civil War and, if very lucky maybe made it up to 1890 or so, Next year we start all over with the Pilgrims. Hey Teach. Could we try this year to get to WWI and II, the Depression, the Jazz age, and so on? Do I have to learn about Lindbergh by watching a Jimmy Stewart movie?

Yes exactly! They always went chronologically and generally ran out of time around the great depression or earlier, every year.