Bill Nye: Creationism is Bad for Kids

I mean that the quantity and quality of variables influencing the genetic changes are highly complex; so much so that mathematically mapping it would be pretty nuts. Add to that a system of selection that can be influenced by quite a selection and intensity of variables as well. In truth nothing is really chaotic, just highly complex, but as far as ease of human understanding goes the word fits.

This system of selection gives rise to organisms which fit the environment, not necessarily in the most optimal way, but they thrive where other organisms would and did fail, and often their success is built from the failures of countless other organisms.

That is what I mean by order through chaos... Though I admit order may not have been the best word.

 

There is no way to express this and not sound douchey, but I don't mean it in a a douchey way. If one can't understand a straight-forward and simplistic theory like evolution, which most people outside the sciences can't for some reason, there is no chance in hell said person is understanding anything else in 99.9% of the sciences. It's such an elegant, accurate, simple, and true theory compared to all the other theories in the sciences we're exposed to.

Evolution frustrates me a great deal in my daily life when I try to explain it to adults who can't seem to grasp it and argue it from some strange, egocentric, hubris POV. It's like trying to argue about the color of the sky with a small child.

That explains it, I was wondering why everyone was arguing semantics with the one vocal person presently seeming to understand the science of the subject. (I think they were just using laymen definitions of scientific terms. At least I hope that was the source of the confusion.)

 

I'd say organisms are largely optimized according to three variables: 1) time of first reproduction 2) reproductive lifespan and aging 3) number and size of offspring. Other measures of success may enter into it, such as sibling's reproductive success (as in kin selection, eusociality, etc.), but broadly speaking, any increase in fitness is a change in one of these variables. I don't think that order and chaos are good metrics for this kind of thing because they do not describe what's going on. Gene frequencies and change in gene frequencies are the best descriptions for what happens during evolution. For example, evolution might favor a gene that just riddles you with tumors, as long as it ensures you have many offspring. This doesn't seem 'ordered' to me, but does seem evolutionarily advantageous.

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I have spent too much time studying and too much time out in the field uncomfortable as all Fucus vesiculous get out and it has made me a cranky son of a Adalia bipunctata. I am going to Africa in January to help a project studying the social evolution of African cichlids. I can't tell you how excited I am to be paid to scuba dive.

 

I don't disagree with any of this. I'm just trying to caution the advocates of science (of which I am one) against making claims they can't prove.

It is perfectly reasonable for a person to say, "There is no good reason to believe there is a will behind evolution, therefore I choose not to believe in such a will." Things break down, though, when people try to confront theists with "scientific" evidence against an assertion that never really had anything to do with science in the first place.

One might as well try to scientifically disprove the Categorical Imperative or the Four Noble Truths.

 

You're being paid to study aquatic cichlids?! Score!

 

Except we not talking about abstract concepts here. We are talking about tangible statements made by religious people, that can be measured, or demonstrated to be true or false. Many claims by creationists are demonstrably false, while others are simply unfalsifiable and therefore utterly useless.

 

Except whenever anyone brings any kind of religious explanation in it is inherently unprovable and unfalsifiable. If someone says something like "such and such god is responsible for evolution" they need to prove at said being exists, create an operational definition for said being which excludes the possibility of it simply being a more powerful life form such that the word deity is fitting and required, and prove that said being is responsible for evolution.

They often cannot see that their explanations are not rational or reasonable. And knowing that those words essentially mean logical, there is a purpose for which we associate those with meaning "intelligent."
Now if Socrates were alive today he would say the same thing I do which is that I know not whether gods exist. Now it is probable they do not but I refuse to believe in something without evidence especially when all reason says it likely does not, and equally I refuse to deny its existence, only the probability of such.

 

Pretty much African wages, but hey, Scuba diving and Lake Tanganyika. I don't know how familiar you are with the African Lakes, but they're an incredible example of convergent evolution.



Keep in mind these species have a common ancestor, but each species is more closely related to its compatriots that live in the same lake. Very good example of how evolution can act in non-random ways. We will be researching Neolamprologus pulcher - not entirely uncommon in the pet trade. No internet, very little electricity, no bjj or judo and I will miss my girlfriend very much. But hey, I'll get to watch fish do stuff.

 

I don't know precisely where you're going with this, but the way I read philosoraptor's point is just that you can't impose divine will on evolution without breaking scientific truth. Evolution isn't predestined. It isn't a clear path in the woods. (Assuming I understood him correctly.)

Personally, I believe there is a mathematical beauty to the pattern of life that is a great inspiration for divine creation. Things break down when you try to shove science into this Biblical tale of God creating man in his image though. All of the hard sciences support that that didn't happen. It's frankly insane to even entertain the notion that we're supposed to put on some charade in public academics and teach creationism in a science classroom, or as equal weight to scientific theory. INSANE! There are no other satisfactory adjectives. At least none that are MAP-friendly.

 

Just trying to say that the claim 'evolution acts without a plan' is testable. Unless the divine plan is "god likes creatures that reproduce a lot." If you think about it, evolution is always acting backwards - selection operates on one generation which dictates the genes of the next generation. There's no guarantee that this next generation will match the environment at all. This even leads to evolutionary dead ends and very stupid creatures like the Panda. There may be a plan in some divine cosmic sense, but there is no part of evolution that requires that.

 

Can we turn this into a share your favorite evolutionary papers thread?

This:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Works_Act

Should outrage every single liberal, conservative, thinking person ever. Please encourage your representatives to vote against it; it restricts the sharing of research that was conducted on taxpayer money. (This is a soapbox for me)

This:

http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/

Has some fascinating ramifications for evolutionary biology!

This:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_01

Is a pretty good primer for evolutionary bio.

 

I don't care what anyone says, there is no way a hideously ugly number like pi is part of some grand design - unless the deity in question is insane.

Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence required - I see no reason to try and argue rationally against outlandish claims when they're made without even a soupcon of evidence in their favour.

The categorical imperative is little more than a paraphrase of the golden rule, and it's very easy to provide evidence against the validity of that.

For example, I like to drink, and therefore would offer people a drink (as according to the golden rule and common hospitality). However some people do not like to drink and so would be harmed by that action, nicely invalidating any categorical moral imperative.

Simple enough to do if you go for practical rather than metaphysical. The four noble truths would be a bit more challenging (or impossible) as they make no testable claims.

 

I don't understand why this should outrage me. It excited me. I support it. Free academic papers to all? Heck yeah, I'm pro-free as an amateur financier. Those scientists can get alternative funding, like leprechaun capturing. If a research group can't trap a chaun or three, they don't deserve the big bucks.

 

Yeah, well considering Earth-from-space is like a giant acid trip thanks to humans, I think the chance that one of us is insane is quite good. And the divine elegance of pi comes in the humor potential. New lab T-shirt = Cake or Pi? With cake crossed off. Fornicate cake!

Or better yet, troll T-shirt time. Go to lab with a shirt that says, "I know Pie to the 43th decimal place, little girls." Only use more colorful objectionable language. It will offended all the scientists and feminists. God WANTED us to have some LuLz, or he wouldn't have made me like this.

 

Umm that should be 43rd.

 

Evolution isn't about randomness. It's what happens when a species fills an ecological niche and adapts to better exploit that ecological niche. So if two completely separate species fill similar ecological niches in their respective environments. It's entirely reasonable to expect them to look similar.

I think a better or more obvious comparison would be the similarities between marsupial mammals and placental mammals.

 

Oops. Will keep a tight lid on it in the future.

PS Creative corrections!

Nah, it does the opposite of that - it reverses the requirement that tax payer funded research be freely accessible online. This is science that the public has paid for, is educational or helpful, and then they're being charged to look at it. Disgraceful!

You are harder to surprise than I am! It's not just that individual organism's took a similar approach towards fulfilling a similar niche, but that those niches were similarly constructed. In each lake you had one critter arrive around ten million years ago, and then adaptively radiate into these separate species. Some of these niches only became available after the evolution of other species of cichlid. Their evolution has even occurred parallel on a genetic level, such as opsin gene expression. To me, when you have separate ecosystems nearly duplicating each other down to a molecular level that's like, creepy weird man.

 

Bingo. God is an unfalsifiable claim. That's my only point. Scientists can point out a lack of evidence for God, and to the rational mind, that's reason enough not to believe. And there's nothing wrong with that. Scientists do themselves a disservice, though, when they overreach themselves and try to falsify an unfalsifiable claim. I am not advocating belief in God or a religious understanding of evolution; I'm just trying to caution Philosoraptor against trying to disprove with science that which cannot be disproved.

 

Hum? In my defense, I was severely sleep-deprived when I read and replied to that. Now that I'm more awake, holy crap! How do I vote on this from Washington State? Can I?

We need massive reforms for opening up the access to scientific literature, not the other way around. The world needs an open-source project to divide all satisfactory peer-reviewed and established literature into a single searchable source that excludes all the fringe crap studies clogging up the work, accessible to all, like Wikipedia.