A lot has been made of Christine O’Donnell’s asking why monkeys aren’t still evolving into humans, but I found this comment from Jonah Goldberg (via Adam Serwer) even more amusing:
Some cool new dinosaurs were discovered, if you believe in that sort of thing.
Does anyone know how William Buckley felt about evolution? I’m curious.
Update. Buckley takes the position that scientists are too dogmatic about evolution, etc. This is one of my favorite conservative positions on all matters scientific.
Wannabe Speechwriter
Not a fan-
http://scienceantiscience.blogspot.com/2007/02/william-f-buckley-weighs-in-on-science.html
Loneoak
I haven’t bothered to ask Gazoogle what Buckley thought about evolution, but I bet it is something like this: “Of course the theory of evolution is true, but it is beneficial to us for the little people to believe false things, thus we must keep evolution out of schools.”
Anne Laurie
“if you believe in that sort of thing”? ! ? Where are all those thousands of dinosaur skeletons supposed to have come from, the Prankster Factory? That comment is purely… Jonah Goldberg level stupid.
Southern Beale
Doug:
Google Is Your Friend:
Citizen_X
Hey, fuck Buckley. It’s his progeny that are evolving into this monster.
But this is going to be my new catchphrase when dealing with wingnuts. “Hey, look out for that bus–if you believe in that sort of thing.”
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Hold on, now we don’t believe in dinosaurs? I mean, I know that they were here until like, what, last Tuesday (because the earth isn’t really terribly old, obvs) but don’t we believe they were really here?
Or is it scientific discovery that he thinks we might not believe in? Because there certainly seems to be some danger of that.
pablo
Look you idiot! They ARE evolving! But you have to look at them very clooooose, and very slooooooooooow!
Wannabe Speechwriter
@Southern Beale:
Great Minds Think Alike…
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@Anne Laurie: They were, or so I’ve heard, planted by God to test us.
As I understand it, this theory is bandied about among Jews and Christians alike. Can’t speak for the Muslims.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I see this more as the Doughy One letting the mask slip, a wink and a sneer at Creationists. People like Goldberg–McCain, not Palin, the majority of FoxNews hosts, not Hannity–have a fundamental contempt for their supporters/audience.
PaulW
The new conservatives don’t believe in Buckley so it doesn’t matter his stance on evolution.
Towards the end of his life, Buckley was criticizing the directions the Republicans and conservatives were going, and as a result he lost a lot of standing with the crowd that’s now in control (Rush, Beck, Malkin, Coulter, Buchanan, Rove, Palin, et al). Buckley may have some meaning for the Friedersdorfs and Frums of the world, but hey who among the GOP pay attention to them anyway?
Yutsano
How ironic. I just finished eating a banana and this thread pops up.
Paul M
Jonah is lazy, not stupid, and is certainly calculating. He’s preaching to two separate choirs.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@Southern Beale:
I’ve spent a lot of time googling the past week for conservative positions on evolution and I’ve had trouble finding them, so I didn’t try with Buckley. Sorry.
Southern Beale
Wannabe Speechwriter:
And apparently at the same time, too! When I posted my response there were ZERO comments!
What I find amusing is that conservatives for some reason disbelieve in scientific evolution but they ALWAYS believe in economic evolution. I mean isn’t that what the “free hand of the market” is all about?
Amir_Khalid
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: It really depends on which Muslim you ask. I have heard many conservative Muslims dismiss evolution, just as creationist Christians do. But this one says God would never lie to us, nor would he make up fossil evidence just to make us believe a lie.
Southern Beale
Amir_Khalid:
See, fundamentalist Christians have that whole Noah’s ark thing to explain the fossils. I know there are some parts of the OT that Muslims believe, is the story of Noah not among them?
EconWatcher
I’m a nonbeliever from a family of right-wing Catholics. I can tell you that Buckley’s position on evolution almost certainly followed GK Chesterton’s in Everlasting Man. That’s actually worth a read if you feel so moved.
Basically, Chesterton admits that our bodies probably evolved, but asserts that there are unique characteristics to humans that cannot reasonably be explained by evolution, and must have come from a divine spark. He offers an interesting discussion of cave paintings as showing some distinctively human attributes that set us apart from animals. I think Chesterton’s position is basically the orthodox Catholic position.
The Catholic Church in the last century has not really been at war with science in the way that the fundies have been. Obviously, the Church has other issues…..
jake
I think O’Donell is a human that turned into a monkey right before our very eyes. Possibly reverse evolution.
MTiffany
What does Ms. O’Donnell mean that monkeys aren’t still evolving into humans? Since she’s taken the leap of throwing around metaphoric shit rather than her own, I’d say she’s proof enough that they still are…
Amir_Khalid
@Southern Beale: We Muslims do indeed have that Noah’s Ark thing in the Quran. But do enlighten me: what’s the supposed Biblical connection between Noah and fossils?
SiubhanDuinne
But but but *Jesus*
http://m.flickr.com/photos/58362611@N00/431306643/
Loneoak
@EconWatcher:
Yeah, the Papists got that ‘war on science’ stuff out of their system early, i.e., during the Inquisition.
Southern Beale
Amir_Khalid:
OH well the fundie Christians believe that the dinosaurs “missed the boat,” literally. So they drowned and we have their fossils to remind us how much God loves us.
Seriously.
I’m a Christian but a very liberal one. This nonsense about the earth only being 7,000 years old is just needlessly retarded. There’s no reason for religion and science to be at odds on this front. Reminds me of destructive squabbles like the Pope excommunicating Gallileo, if you ask me.
debbie
I think Buckley’s opinion of science is rooted more in his being a life-long practicing Catholic than on his being a conservative.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@EconWatcher: The Church has always been at war with science. It’s just the branch of science which changes.
Southern Beale
But the Catholics are not anti-evolution. Maybe they were in Buckley’s day…..
cathyx
Either fossils are really only 6000 years old, or dinosaurs didn’t really exist. Take your pick.
Cody_K
This is just too fitting not to post here…
Monkey to Man – http://youtu.be/9_EyXPs2_Jk
WereBear
Anything we humans believe makes us special is found in other mammals.
Where else, indeed, would it have come from?
But I know orthodox religions cannot admit that, even though one would think they realize their deity must have made the animals that way.
sherparick
150 years ago J.S. Mill (“On Liberty”) wrote that the conservatives were the “Stupid Party.” That becomes truer and truer with each passing day. Apparently, the only science these guys believe in are Nukes and the internal combustion engine (oil is of course actually a “fossil” of long dead plankton and ocean algae, hence the term, “fossil fuel”) which apparently work by magic.
Very short explanation. Current living New Wold Monkeys live at the edge of one twig of the evolutionary bush. Current living Old World Monkeys live on edge of another twig, which goes back to a branch from which New World Monkey also sprung. We live at the end of another, very short (200,000 to 150,000 years), twig, that sprung from the homo branch, of the homindae branch, of the ape branch, which about 40,000,000 years ago split from off from a common branch for monkeys and apes. Evolution is not a ladder, but a branching tree and all current living species are the twigs and leaves on that tree. Also, Evolution is not a theory, it is a fact. The theory that best explains the data (3.5 billion fossil record and the current dispersion of of species over time and geographic distance is Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection species breeding and being selected as the most fit compared to others for a particular geographic space and a particular climate. As the late Stephen Jay Gould stated, disputing the fact of evolution is perverse.
“In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.”
eemom
@Southern Beale:
what a typical Buckleyism.
Interesting, because he was a devout Catholic…..and even the Catholic Church is somewhat reasonable on evolution.
Then again, it IS hard to comprehend how the trait of Extreme Pomposity made it far enough through the natural selection process to account for the survival of a creature such as him.
Kryptik
I laugh at the idea that ‘scientists are too dogmatic about evolution’. Considering that 1) it comes from a viewpoint that is rigidly dogmatic in and of itself, and 2) it downgrades the very idea from ‘tightly researched scientific theory and field of study’ to ‘belief’. And that’s the main problem. Science is just another ‘belief system’ to them, it doesn’t register as fact because it’s inconvenient and most simply don’t understand how it comes to be. It just ‘is’ to them, and that means it can be easily discarded if one claps hard enough.
Southern Beale
I would suggest if Christine O’Donnell wants to observe evolution as it’s happening she contract a virulent, antibiotic-resistant stapf infection.
Have fun, hon.
EconWatcher
Southern Beale:
I think the orthodox Catholic position does not admit that evolution can explain everything that we are as humans, but basically concedes that evolution happened. See my comments on Chesterton above.
I don’t have a lot of good things to say about my former Church, but I think in this area they have come to a reasonable position, giving science its due while holding their ground on some eternal mysteries. This has been their position since before Buckley was born.
Michael
@EconWatcher:
Chesterton and Huxley were fucking tools.
Amir_Khalid
@Southern Beale:
BWAHAAHAA …
The Catholic Church only recanted its punishment of Galileo in 1992 — under John Paul 2. I hear that the Zinger of Rats doesn’t think this was such a great idea.
Comrade PhysioProf
I thought creationists do “believe in” dinosaurs, but they think jeezus was riding around on them or something.
EconWatcher
WereBear:
I’ve been an agnostic since I was 11, so i’m not trying to convince you of anything.
But try Chapter 1 of Chesterton’s Everlasting Man. He makes a decent case that there are irreducible differences between humans and animals, and uses those differences in support of his theological position.
It’s not as easily dismissed as you might think.
eemom
@EconWatcher:
yup
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/4588289/The-Vatican-claims-Darwins-theory-of-evolution-is-compatible-with-Christianity.html
On this point the Church and the rightwing fundie freak parade that pass for “Christians” in the U.S. part company.
cathyx
Why can’t the church believe that God created life to evolve.
nancydarling
I would rather claim kin to monkeys than Christine O’Donnel or Jonah Goldberg.
Southern Beale
At the Creation Museum they have a display showing Adam and Eve and their pet dinosaur. It’s hilarous — have only seen pics though ironically I was just a few miles up the road attending a writer’s workshop the weekend they opened. I would have gone but knew it would be a clusterfuck of media.
DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.
@EconWatcher:
Yes, the Catholic Church has not been anti-science in the way that evangelicals (for example) have. Which makes Buckley even more of an ass for being anti-science.
Linda Featheringill
@pablo:
True.
But why would they want to evolve into humans?
Southern Beale
And that pretty much said all we need to know about the church’s relevance where science is concerned. I want a bumper sticker that says “I’m for the separation of church and laboratory.” Seriously: the church needs to worry about spiritual matters and STFU where science is concerned. Don’t be so threatened, dudes.
But it’s understandable. For centuries the church WAS the laboratory. Until the modern era, religion and science were the same thing.
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
What? Monkeys ARE still evolving into humans.
How else to explain John Cole becoming a Democrat five years ago?
Brachiator
Damn that Isaac Newton for being so dogmatic about gravity!
The Buckley quote reminds me of Andrew Sullivan and others who simply do not understand science or how science works and have to re-imagine it as philosophy.
If a competing theory can explain all the fossil and biological evidence more comprehensively than the theory of evolution, scientists would embrace it in a heartbeat.
There is a very fun website, TimeTree, with a tool that allows you to compute the years separating any two species. For example, the distance between humans and chimps is about 6 million years (i.e., separation from common ancestor). The distance between humans and dogs is about 98 million years.
catclub
@Southern Beale:
They also believe in social darwinism that says that the rich are the most highly evolved and best adapted to the world.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yutsano #12:
How ironic. I just finished flinging poo at the walls and this thread pops up.
Southern Beale
Honestly, the biggest shame about fundie squabbling over evolution is that it is COMPLETELY the opposite of what Jesus would give a crap about. The true Christian message is to uplift the powerless, to challenge the status quo, to condemn those who exploit others for their own personal gain. It’s about challenging the status quo and these massive battles over something like evolution don’t even factor into the equation.
catclub
@EconWatcher:
Why do I suspect that these arguments parallel the arguments against artificial intelligence doing things that humans can do?
I.e. playing chess was uniquely human until computers started beating (almost) all comers.
Now playing chess is no longer thought of as uniquely human.
Is Go now the standard human capability that computers will never master?
Time wounds all heels – and it is very hard to predict the future.
Even harder to predict what cannot be done.
Warren Terra
I’m normally sympathetic to some complaints that scientists should try to be gentle and persuasive in explaining what the evidence shows, on a “you catch more flies with honey” basis. But I don’t think it’s really intolerance of backwardness that WFB is referring to when he says “dogmatic” — seems to me, he’s saying scientists should be more open to nonscientific explanations. And that’s not only wrong, it displays a fundamental failure to understand what Science is, even an intolerance of Science. The whole point of Science is to be open to alternative, testable explanations – but saying “your theory holds together but maybe a magic man done it” isn’t an alternative explanation, it’s a retreat into blind faith and received “wisdom”.
Despite my Atheism, I acknowledge that you can’t disprove the existence of an inscrutable and omnipotent being; you can’t even disprove specific gods, on the argument that the mountains of contrary evidence might be a divine trick. This simple incompatibility is why it’s important to be tolerant of people of faith; Science isn’t really using the same language — but that goes both ways, and it’s a test WFB clearly failed.
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s not my turn to clean up this time! :-P
Southern Beale
@catclub:
I’m not sure they believe that the rich are the most highly evolved and best adapted to the world but I sense they believe that the rich are the most deserving of their wealth, by virtue of the fact that they ARE wealthy. Again, it’s the same argument we’ve been having for hundreds of years, just transported into a modern context. I call it modern feudalism.
Brachiator
@catclub:
Social darwinism, fortunately, has got nothing to do with natural selection or the theory of evolution. And liberals and conservatives both often misunderstand a key point about evolution: there ain’t no such thing as “most highly evolved,” nor does evolution have a goal, direction or purpose.
By the by, I don’t know if any other posters noted the mocking takedown of Christine O’Donnell’s crazy ass beliefs on the opening of Saturday Night Live. The rest of the show, unfortunately, was rather blah.
freelancer (itouch)
@EconWatcher:
Yes it is. Shorter Chesterton:
Complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, I fail to understand how all this complexity arose from simplicity, therefore: God.
PeakVT
@Southern Beale: They believe in Social Darwinism.
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
IIRC, the Catholic Church officially accepted evolution in the 1950s, so it would have been past Buckley’s Catholic school or CCD days.
The argument in Catholicism is that evolution happened, but that God added a soul to humans and that makes us different than the other animals.
Mnemosyne
@EconWatcher:
There’s been a heck of a lot of recent research that disproves what people used to think was true about the differences between humans and animals. Humans are no longer the only tool-using animal — heck, primates aren’t even the only tool-using group now that they’ve found crows using them.
My main questioning of Chesterton would be that there are a whole lot of new things that we’ve discovered are not, in fact, unique to humans, and we’ve only discovered those things in the past 10 or 20 years. He may have been right given the scientific knowledge available to him at the time, but further science doesn’t support his conclusions.
WereBear
@EconWatcher: I am familiar with Chesterton’s writings. But he comes from belief first; as he must. And he did not convince me.
We have clever hands and the ability to imagine something; this has let us do amazing engineering feats. This obscures what we have in common with mammals; which is compassion, empathy, and love.
The very thing, oddly enough, that I think religion should be concerned with.
Andy K
@Mnemosyne:
Talking Buckley the Elder here (b. 1925) , not the Younger.
On edit: D’OH! Nevermind.
FlipYrWhig
Dude, when your religion is literally based on dogma, I don’t think you get to criticize dogmatism in others.
SiubhanDuinne
@Comrade PhysioProf #38:
*I thought creationists do “believe in” dinosaurs, but they think jeezus was riding around on them or something.*
He was. See my link at #22:
http://m.flickr.com/photos/58362611@N00/431306643/
Also too:
http://m.flickr.com/photos/bar-art/414998399/
Linda Featheringill
Darwin:
It is not the strongest of the species that survive nor the most intelligent but the most responsive to change.
quaint irene
Like the unicorns?
******
I love the ‘scientists are too dogmatic’ line. Yup, they’re just too married to those pesky facts.
Linda Featheringill
I believe Chesterton’s Everlasting Man was published in 1925.
With the many, many studies done on the similarities among many different species that have been done just in the past 25 years, why should I have to worry about something that was written 85 years ago?
Andy K
@Linda Featheringill:
That sounds like Judge’s Theory of Devolution.
Joel
the easiest way to describe evolution is simply that things that reproduce successfully will prevail.
that doesn’t necessarily require “responsiveness”. in some cases, such as dominant microorganisms like e. coli and s. cerevisae, there’s a pretty generalized approach that has worked remarkably well.
GregB
Evolution must be true because conservatives are evolving into ever bigger assholes.
El Cid
You know, maybe sometimes scientists oughtta think more about answering questions unscientifically. Doing so would really be thinking outside the box.
El Cid
Also, why aren’t dinosaurs evolving into Sleestaks?
John Bird
@Paul M:
Amen to that.
Mike in NC
@Brachiator:
Kinda like every other episode of SNL dating back 20 years?
befuggled
@Amir_Khalid: Some brands of creationism use Noah’s flood to explain away all the evidence for evolution and an Earth that isn’t literally six thousand years old. Fossils? Explained by the flood. All those geological features? Explained by the flood.
At the risk of angering WordPress, see the wikipedia article on flood geology.
different church-lady
God, I love that monkey thing: it’s like, “Hey last year supposedly people moved from Chicago to Detroit. So why are there still people in Chicago? Huh? Got you there, don’t I?”
Stuck in the Funhouse
Nothing a stiff green banana wouldn’t fix.
Chris
Well, conservatives may have a point: they, and their ideas, sure don’t evolve.
JohnR
@Brachiator:
A bit optimistic, surely? Going by history and tradition, there would quickly be several camps formed, each differing slightly on the accuracy of the data or the applicability of the model or the appropriateness and thoroughness of the analyses and the assumptions. Things would get personal and testy; acusations would be bandied about in the more muck-raking of journals (the letters section in Nature, for instance, would feature a running charge/counter-charge exchange of scathing, footnoted, verbal bird-flipping), and soon several well-known biologists would not be allowed to attend the same after-seminar parties…
WyldPirate
cathyx@41:
This is the position of many “educated” Christians and it’s just as fucking stupid as the fundie “beliefs.
But what can you expect from dumbasses that believe in a cloud riding SkyDaddy without a scintilla of evidence?
..;or dumbasses that think dogs have a human “love” gene?
kommrade reproductive vigor
I recommend … A course … of … leeches.
JCT
@JohnR: And don’t forget the near-inevitable retraction when it turns out that their uber-sexy result wasn’t reproducible. A Science/Nature special these days it seems.
I once had one of these uh, delightful conversations with one of the complete-idiot numbskulls in my provincial little Westchester town. My oldest was nearby and said that she was amazed that there wasn’t steam literally coming from my ears because it was clear that I was pretty tweaked. She was only 10 at the time but I took the opportunity to explain that evolution is one of the central tenets of biology and you really have to be very ignorant to completely dismiss it out of hand as some scientist’s wet dream. Sigh.
Just more of the dumbing down in this country– seems to be accelerating when it comes to science.
Viva BrisVegas
@DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
But sections of the church are still fun to watch.
Check out “Galileo was Wrong”, the first annual Catholic conference on geocentrism. November 6th, South Bend Indiana. $50/head and worth every cent.
WereBear
@WyldPirate: I don’t feel like a dumbass.
Pascal thought animals were clockwork machines who didn’t really feel pain. But they have nerves just like us.
Behaviorists, like Watson, thought emotions were far more disposable than they turned out to be; his children had a tendency to commit suicide.
When a person runs into a burning building to save their child; it’s heroism. When a dog or cat does it, it’s simply instinct.
I really want to know what science bases this on; besides their own prejudices.
Sly
It’s a good thing evolution through natural selection is a myth, otherwise viruses would be adapting to our vaccines and antiviral drugs through their extremely short reproductive cycles and high mutation rates.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Southern Beale:
It’s 6,000 years old! ;)
The reason they believe this is because carbon dating involves things like algebra and you know who gave us that, right? It’s just another evil mooslim plot!
They remember the terror of math in school and that’s all it takes to get them quivering in fear.
John Bird
@Viva BrisVegas:
Oh, yeah, there’s a large amount of regional separatism in certain parts of the church. America is one place this has exploded, and O’Donnell is evidence. Many Catholics here care only about banning abortion and condoms and not a whit about social justice or ending war; many others (the majority, I believe) don’t care about banning abortion and condoms at all.
Catholics divide surprisingly evenly in this country, which is interesting when you consider that our Supreme Court is now mainly (ostensibly) Roman Catholic, with the rest of the seats held by Jews, and for the first time in its history, no Protestants at all. The Catholics on the court include both Scalia and Sotomayor.
O’Donnell is, in my opinion, a Protestant who don’t know it, as are many other Catholics. She has an evangelical focus on policies and would never talk about how we need to end war across the globe. She talks about wacky stuff like being a former Satanist until her conversion experience, a Protestant testimony that points fingers at things that the Church lays sole claim to identifying, things like ‘witchcraft’ and personal communications with supernatural beings. It’s a viewpoint that is also strikingly popular in the exploding Catholic Third World.
These new trends may soon completely outweigh the Catholic Church’s policy and catechism; until then, the American left could stand to make some noise about how they’re the ones who agree with the church on social spending, Palestine, and the inherent superiority (nonexistent, according to Rome) of market capitalism over other systems. The Catholic right, in my opinion, is less substantially Catholic than the Catholic left in America.
Daddy-O
@Anne Laurie: Never mind where those skeletons came from, Dear Anne. For every scientific fact in existence, there’s a wonderful, religious, mythological explanation for it…and they always, always dovetail most beautifully with The Bye-Bull…
Funny how that works. Almost like they’ve got it down to a science. Oops, bad word choice…
;-)
Daddy-O
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I agree. Jonah isn’t half as stupid as his behavior or his writing. It’s all about his mama, and the paycheck.
WyldPirate
WereBear@84:
Pascal was a fucking mathematician, not a physiologist. I wouldn’t doubt that he “believed” that without a fucking single shred of experimental evidence or hypothesis being tested to back up his “belief”.
That’s the damned point. Evolution isn’t something you “believe: in. It is a scientific theory and a FACT. It is backed by fucking mountains of evidence. It is the best supported, most comprehensive theory in all of science. Nothing else comes close.
Thus, you can “believe” the evidence supporting the theory of biological evolution or not. If you don’t, you are, in my view, either ignorant or fucking stupid. The ignorance can be fixed, but the stupid usually can’t.
And while I’m at it, Pascal’s “wager” is simply piss-poor philosophical cowardice.
Hopefully, Pascal was a better mathematician than he was a philosopher or “physiologist”, because he sucks balls at the latter two.
As to your “watson”, which “Watson” are you talking about, James Watson?
John Bird
@WyldPirate:
I hope you realize you’re attacking someone who appears to agree with you on the issue of evolution, as well as the (completely tangential) issue of Pascal’s beliefs, but who disputes a strict biological divide between affection in humans and affection in animals. You might try redirecting your arguments toward that issue, or, if you don’t know anything substantial about that issue, dropping the whole thing.
Sly
@WereBear:
It depends on what kind of behavior you’re referring to, and I’m not quite sure what you mean by “their own prejudices.” Scientists having been using the principles of evolution to explain a whole range of animal behaviors, beginning with the work of people like Konrad Lorenz in the 1950s and 60s.
If you want a reason why dogs like humans, and vice versa, the jury is still somewhat out. I think most scientists agree that dogs as a species are the product of artificial selection (the first species essentially created by humans, some 15,000 years ago) and as a result developed an inheritable disposition towards us because humans probably didn’t breed dogs that had a fondness for biting them in the ass.
JohnR
@JCT:
It’s really hard to be patient and try to explain basic biology and evolution to people who really would rather not think, but simply believe what they have been told by some father figure. Still, that’s a human constant – I think that all this stuff (intellectual ‘laziness’, stereotyping, group identity, etc.) is the result of evolutionary pressure to allow quick processing of potentially critical information to allow fast decisions. The more you can reduce complicated shades of gray to simple yes/no, black/white equations, the more successful you’re likely to be in evolutionary terms (over evolutionary time scales, anyway). That’s my working hypothesis, anyway, and I prefer to only discuss it and think of ways to test it after I’ve had sufficient beer to make the crooked assumptions straight and the rough arguments plain.
Viva BrisVegas
@WereBear:
I think you probably mean Descartes.
Asshole
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:
Interestingly enough, the Jesuits have been at the forefront of seismological research since 1745. How does that information fit into your overall generalization?
russell
Who says they’re not?
Does O’Donnell hang out with a lot of monkeys? How would she know either way?
And not for nothing, but it’s time that the awful truth is told. William Buckley was an insufferable prick.
A big vocabulary does not a good man make.
brick oven bill
If there’s no evolution then how did we get blacks and asians from a white’s only Noah’s Ark?
Blotto von Bismarck
@60: Otters and octopuses use tools too, just to name a couple off the top of my head. I think the latter was only discovered to use tools in the last few years.
russell
Actually I think Noah was a brother.
John Bird
@brick oven bill:
The curse of Ham!
El Cid
To be fair, it’s not like Descartes had a much better model from which to choose in discussing animals as a mechanism much like a clock mechanism.
What alternatives were there not based on spooky religious assumptions?
WyldPirate
john bird @91:
How you reached that conclusion from the gibberish werebear wrote is beyond me.
On top of that, that’s one hell of a roundabout argument on the “biological divide” as well. It’s a weak as hell argument with little to no evidence supporting it, too.
So is werebear your sock puppet or are you just puffin’ on some really good dank–or both? ;)
cthulhu
@WyldPirate:
Actually I would agree with John Bird. My read of the entire thread is that everyone here accepts evolution as valid. The questions seem to revolve around what is actually believed by those who don’t and what they use as a basis for those beliefs.
My sense of werebear’s posts is that he/she finds the position of human exceptionalism (i.e., evolution may be fine for other life forms but humans still have divine intervention at work) is also flawed.
There is very recent work regarding the emotional lives of animals that werebear is probably considering. I don’t think he ever claimed any sort of “love gene” though research presently supports that certain oxytocin-based neuro-hormonal circuitry are likely related to feelings of love, attachment, loss, and grieving. Circuitry found in quite a few species.
And it seemed a little out of bounds to jump to an accusation of sock puppetry but I don’t have a good sense as to how often such things may happen here.
Mnemosyne
@WyldPirate:
Well, the ability to read and comprehend English is helpful.
You do realize that you’re acting as though something that Charles Darwin wrote about is somehow new and controversial, right?
300baud
@Mnemosyne:
Exactly. I haven’t read Chesterton, but if he’s like the other creationist stuff I’ve read, it sounds like he confused, “I can’t think of another explanation for this,” with “there is no other explanation of this. ” Or perhaps, “there is currently no evidence that contradicts my position,” with “there cannot be evidence that contradicts my position.”
That shit makes me crazy. I get that saying “I don’t know” is hard, but man, it’d be nice if people could give it a try once and a while.
300baud
@WyldPirate:
As a flaming atheist with shelves of books on evolution, allow me to say that you’re totally wrong here.
The fundie approach to the intersection between science and religion is known as “god of the gaps”. They use god to explain whatever they don’t know. Which is why they find evolution threatening; it seems to be taking away God’s territory. This is not just bad science; it’s also terrible theology.
If you talk to scientists who are religious, the general view they hold is that God (or gods or whatever) is everywhere, and behind everything. Many see their work in explicitly religious terms; their calling is to appreciate and explain the many works of God. Any apparent conflict between religion and science is just an indication of error in one or the other. To them, the god-of-the-gaps approach is a petty refusal to see God’s creation in all its glory.
I think they’re probably wrong about the God stuff. But honestly, who cares? I don’t know the why of the universe either, so as long as they’re nice people and they’re doing good science, I count ’em as on my side. The fundie, anti-science position is orders of magnitude more stupid than that. In particular, it’s willfully stupid, a stupidity that contaminates all their thinking. While the smart, scientifically literate Christian view is at worst a well-meant error.
Sm*t Cl*de
Some cool new dinosaurs were discovered, if you believe in that sort of thing.
Well, no. some cool dinosaurs were discovered whether you believe in that sort of thing or not.
Sadly, I am stuck in the old-fashioned “Reality-does-not-go-away-when-you-stop-believing-in-it” way of thinking.
WyldPirate
cthulu@103:
The very problem I have with what werebear said is that he tries to make a case for human exceptionalism That and the fact that people who are ignorant of evolution try to anthropomorphize the feeling that their pets “love” them is ridiculous.
I’m aware of some of the research you speak of regarding oxytocin. There is no question that close attachment to a member of the opposite sex causes it to rise. There is no question that humans are attracted to pheremones like other critters. The point is that there is likely a selective advantage imparted by such neural/biochemical pathways. I dunno, something like, perhaps, helping a pair of humans stay attracted to each other long enough to raise a child to the point where it is not so completely vulnerable as it is in infancy and when they are wee toddlers. After all, six and seven year olds can run and climb trees–not as fast as most adults, perhaps but still a very useful physical skill in our not too distant past that infants and toddlers don’t possess.
My problem is when people try to insert all of these fucked up “romantic”/sentimental explanations about these sorts of topics with regard to evolution. Yes, we are very smart, walking, talking, inventive primates. However, just because we are doesn’t negate the fact of millions of years of primate evolution and it doesn’t negate the fact that there are valid evolutionarily-based explanations–such as the drive for a species to reproduce and successfully raise their offspring–to explain these phenomenon.
“Thinking” your dog “loves” you doesn’t negate the fact that perhaps your dog or cat “loves” you because you feed it and provide it shelter–and in the case of dogs, a “pack” for it to belong to– rather than some special attraction of a “love” gene. Having us give a cat or dog their food would be a hell of a lot easier way for said critter to “earn” a living than living in the wild. We humans “selected” this trait (loyalty, love, whatever the fuck you want to call it) early on in the domestication of these animals without realizing what we were doing. We also got something in return as well–pest control with cats and a myriad of uses for dogs.
I also hope you noted the winky after my sockpuppet comment. I was teasing him/her.
JCT
@300baud:
This is one of my favorite misconceptions about scientists — that we live in a cocoon of certainty and that for us to say that we don’t know the answer to a question it somehow implies that science is useless or weak. Every time I have been part of a jury selection the attorney asks me if I could operate under the constraints of a “reasonable” doubt because I am a scientist. I usually carefully explain that I approach every set of data that my lab generates with a healthy dose of reasonable doubt. I still get thrown off every time.
Usually the last thing I tell my students before their thesis defense is that if they simply do not know the answer to a question and are not comfortable reasoning it out during their final defense to just say “I don’t know”. I remind them that I have never seen a lightning bolt come through the ceiling or a trap door open in that context.
So I agree — it’s a tough lesson to learn, but this inability to be honest and humble regarding one’s knowledge base is a real problem no matter what you do for a living. It seems that the current level of political “discourse” bears this out.
WyldPirate
Mnomosyne@104:
Complete and utter horseshit. I wrote what I did because of the idiocy of people who still think what Darwin wrote is controversial. It isn’t, at least in the scientific community and amongst those of us in the reality-based community that are aware and educated about what the theory of biological evolution is and says.
I wrote what i did because what was said was gibberish. Neither Pascal or Descartes–or whomever came up with the example werebear used–wasn’t using the modern scientific method to test the “theory” he/she used in the example.
TTT
I lost all respect for Buckley forever in the mid ’90s, when he had a “Firing Line” special on evolution that featured Steven Jay Gould. At one point during the show, Gould demonstrated the open-and-shut case of the transition from reptiles to mammals, possibly the most well-documented series of transitional fossils ever discovered. Buckley granted that the sequence was impressive but then said evolution was still a weak case because–I shit you not–there weren’t any other examples as strong as that one!
SRW1
Christine O’Donnel and Jonah Goldberg are proof positive that evolution exists: they embody a step gone wrong.
Bubblegum Tate
@Blotto von Bismarck:
If the octopus ever develops the ability to live on dry land, the human race is totally fucked.
cthulhu
@WyldPirate:
It seemed to me that werebear was using the animal-as-machine theory of the past as an example of bad theory and the fact that someone as otherwise bright as Pascal (and as others have noted Descartes as well) nonetheless supported it. Obviously arguing what was believed in the past, even by the most learned people, isn’t particularly relevant when it has long since been shown to be wrong BUT it is certainly the case that modern theists sometimes underpin their current theories using outdated scientific beliefs as a way to “science-up” their positions.
As to whether werebear might be engaging in too much anthropomorphism, that’s less clear to me. It’s definitely erroneous to look at animal behavior X and ascribe human-style motivations. On the other hand, I’m more with Stephan Jay Gould who posits that human social-cognitive “evolution” is a largely separable process from biological evolution and that we shouldn’t try to apply the same rules to both. So neuro-biological systems for attachment may have evolved (in us as well as certain animals) but that when one starts talking about concepts such as love or marriage say, we shouldn’t look to biological evolution for an explanation. Further, that biological attachment sometimes yields odd cross-species connections or even to inanimate objects (cars, houses, for example) is purely accidental and not inherently selected for. Unfortunately knowing this doesn’t make it any easier to lose a pet (um, animal companion, ha).
I think this thread will soon be dead but since you took the time to respond I thought I should do likewise.
BTW, I did note the winky at the end but it was a bit in contrast to the tone before it. Thus it is good you confirmed it.
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@JCT:
Seriously? The scientists I know are awesome at saying they don’t know.
I feel like anybody who has spent time in a lab has to have had their asses handed to them time and again by cold, hard data. Nature is tricky, and I feel like real science encourages a lot of humility and a clear understanding of the limits of knowledge, and the gradations of it.