Science, 1; faith, 0

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Feb 4 2007, 10:17 am
but many underlying assumptions have never been adequately challenged or reevaluated.

Which ones? It seems to me that no theory has been poked and prodded in more directions by scientists than evolution.

And niggling details here and there aside (is "punctuated equilibrium" a part of the system, etc), the overwhelming fact of evolution comes down to this:

It has answered a vast number of questions, and has pointed to answers time and time again. Nothing in biology makes sense without evolution. Evolution has contributed greatly to our understanding of the world. You can argue over details, but the system itself is simply overwhelmingly proven. DNA has turned out to be a mechanism exactly in line with evolution, and DNA has led us to further discoveries that confirm evolutionary theories.

When thinking about something like creationism, just ask yourself: "What has this contributed to our understanding of the world in the thousands of years it has been around? What do we know today that we wouldn't have found without creationism as a basis?"

On the one hand we have a theory that has had a profound impact on our understanding of the world; on the other we have a myth that has contributed nothing. The perpetrators of the myth deserve no particular consideration or credit in scientific terms.
Feb 4 2007, 1:18 pm
Well said, Deadron.

You can quibble over the precise details of the mechanisms involved, but the basic theory has stood up very well. No doubt it will continue to be refined as we learn more about biology.


Lummox JR:
I'm not sure how a 20-year-old quote by Carl Sagan can be counted as a score for the science team

Whatever you may think of the man (and after reading some of the quotes he's written, having never heard of him before, he sounds to me like he has got his head screwed on the right way), the quote itself is solid.


BlackBirdOmega wrote:
People say we are destroying the world, that is a pretty egotistical thing to say. The world has been here for billions of years and will be here billions of years from now. Eventually either the sun will explode or the Earth will repair itself. Either way, man will be gone long before then, so we're not destroying the world, the world is destroying us.

"Destroying the world" is hyperbole, and you're a fool if you don't realise that. For sure, the Earth itself will be around for a long, long time - heck, it's had multiple asteroid impacts and it's still going. The question is, how long will we be on it? If you believe widespread scientific opinion, we're slowly but surely digging our own graves.

The Earth itself, of course, does not care. This big ol' lump of rock will keep orbiting the sun for a long time yet, no matter what we do. It's also very likely that some form of life will persist. "Some form of life" just doesn't necessarily mean "humans".

Re: Recycling
I know you're an intelligent person, Deadron, so whenever you state a position different from my own I'm forced to stop and think about it (whether I decide to agree with it is a different matter, of course!) So I went back and read your old "Recycling is Evil" blog post, and I have to say I don't agree. Mind if I take this discussion there?
Feb 4 2007, 4:10 pm
Feel free to take the recycling debate to my more relevant post -- just be prepared to try and defend against my philosophy of "Recycle when there are benefits to doing so, and don't when there is more damage to doing so..." And if you get past that, maybe I'll post my feelings about Mother Theresa...:)

On Carl Sagan, I'm surprised someone of your interests hasn't heard of him. He's an important figure in science, and well worth getting to know more about.

That said, I don't always agree with him -- he played a central role in playing up what I think of us "Chicken Little Environmentalism". But that aside, his Cosmos TV series was influential to me as a yung'un, and helped popularize science. He was always for looking at the human side of scientific issues, and he brought a skeptical view to most things.

Ah, as usual for this sort of think, his Wikipedia entry appears to be a good summary of the man.
Feb 4 2007, 4:12 pm
Mother Theresa? A maladjusted, sadistic, idiot who tried to do some things to help the poor, but opposed one of the few things that could have helped them substantially - contraception.

...

Yeah, I don't like her much. <_<
Feb 4 2007, 4:55 pm
Jp wrote:
Mother Theresa? A maladjusted, sadistic, idiot who tried to do some things to help the poor, but opposed one of the few things that could have helped them substantially - contraception.

...

Yeah, I don't like her much. <_<

Well, while we're on controversy in general, being against contraception is perfectly fine if you're also for abstinence. If you're not for abstinence, then yeah, being against contraception is a death sentence.
Feb 4 2007, 5:15 pm
Well, while we're on controversy in general, being against contraception is perfectly fine if you're also for abstinence.

Not really; it's just ignoring reality. Abstinence only works until it doesn't :-(. You can be for abstinence and still want contraception around for when people make bad decisions. And that is something you can always count on people to do.

Sagan had billions and billions of good points :-).
Feb 4 2007, 5:36 pm
Mother Theresa? A maladjusted, sadistic, idiot who tried to do some things to help the poor, but opposed one of the few things that could have helped them substantially - contraception.

Don't white wash her! She wasn't trying to help the poor, she was trying to let them suffer. Her purpose was not to provide hospitals, but to provide places where people could come and die while suffering. Christopher Hitchens wrote a book on the subject, and testified at before the Catholic Church as the "Devil's Advocate" against her saint-hood. In this Slate article he summarizes the argument against her, including:

[Mother Theresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.
Feb 4 2007, 6:28 pm
Crispy wrote:
"Destroying the world" is hyperbole, and you're a fool if you don't realise that. For sure, the Earth itself will be around for a long, long time - heck, it's had multiple asteroid impacts and it's still going. The question is, how long will we be on it? If you believe widespread scientific opinion, we're slowly but surely digging our own graves.

You'd be surprised how many people take the idea of "Destroying the world" literally. Just go to a Starbucks around noon and drop a foam cup in the grass or eat a piece of beef jerky.
Feb 4 2007, 9:05 pm
That's just hyperbole, again. You're really bad at recognising that. ;-)

Deadron: Okay, I'll take this over to that post when I've collected my thoughts a bit more.
Feb 16 2007, 10:39 am
Here's a fun little chart that goes along with this post...

Feb 16 2007, 11:10 am
Heh, that's brilliant. I love it.
Feb 16 2007, 2:07 pm
Bwahahaha. Who says flowcharts are useless? :-)

By the way, I still intend to comment on your recycling post, Deadron - I just haven't got around to it yet...
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