Bill Nye warns: Creation views threaten US science
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As such, while clearly evolution should be taught in schools, I fail to see how students are significantly harmed if it isn't. The fact that these kids come communities where most of the parents are really dumb has to be hundreds of times more damaging than not getting a day or two worth of lecture.
(And as an aside, I would bet money that the percentage of religious folks who have a good understanding of the main arguments in favor of evolution is about 10x as high as the percentage of 'science-oriented' folks who have a good understanding of all the philosophical concepts referenced in the wiki article on intelligent design.)
The style of "creationism" in America that is seen as the opposition of evolution (versions of creationism that appear compatible with evolution exist. See: the RCC) is not defined merely by the absence of evolution but also by it's warped and twisted "versions" of it (strawmen) and often some healthy dose of conspiracy theory (evil scientist conspiracies).
This basically 'immunizes' children against what would normally be a trivial education in evolution. I say this from personal experience. In retrospect evolution is embarrassingly simple and obvious, but it took years for it to truly sink in for me. A quick 10 minute youtube video can explain it great, but once a certain degree of damage has been done it can suddenly take a lot more.
The government, in their National Assessment of Adult Literacy, used to measure up to 'advanced literacy', which was roughly the level you would need to be able to read a scientific journal article. Such a small percentage of adults were able to read at this level (less than 3%) that they dropped it entirely, and now the literacy assessment scale only goes up to 'proficient'. This is the level of literacy you would need to compare and contrast two newspaper editorials, which are generally written at around an 8th grade reading level. 96% of high school graduates are unable to do this.
If you're worried about not understanding evolution locking students out of science then I would suggest that your concerns, while noble, are about 95% misplaced.
Anti-science styled creationism concerns me because even very bright people are susceptible. Read about Kurt Wise for a very sad but great example of this.
Of course getting students to read is also immensely important. If I thought efforts to teach evolution were hampering efforts to improve literacy, then I would immediately deprioritize evolution... but I do not.
<cheeky-mode> Perhaps we can hit two birds with one stone though, and encourage people to read the bible.</cheeky-mode>
Our track record on education, which basically shows that we're capable of tackling zero problems at once, suggests otherwise.
Again, my argument isn't that we shouldn't put any effort into defending the teaching of evolution. I'm just pointing out that empirically there is a lot more effort being put into this than is being put into other areas that are demonstrably more important.
Most of the real effort is in fighting school districts in court for trying to outright teach creationism (Such as at Dover, the school-district next to mine that made national news with their anti-science antics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School...), and in minor science celebrities writing a few books and making a few youtube videos.
Easing off evolution to work on literacy is like easing off NASA to work on world hunger. Find the players that are actually consuming the bulk of the resources.
Large in what way?
How much of physics depends on evolution? How about chemistry? How about materials science? I can go on and on.
In fact, much of biology doesn't depend on evolution. (Who do you think did all the work on selective breeding pre-darwin?)
I don't know Knuth's views on evolution, but he is Christian. Can you tell me if he believes in evolution?
As someone else pointed out in this thread, evolution is being used as a tribal signal.
And no, believers in evolution are NOT more rational.
Maybe I am really stretching, but if evolution wasn't real, then many machine learning algorithms wouldn't work.
If you make arguments like that, you merely make it easier for others to dismiss you.
You're really stretching. No one denies selective breeding. The evolution claim is much stronger, and isn't necessary for machine learning.
Why would you make such an absurd claim?
If evolution doesn't exist, then why do we constantly see processes evolve based on a feedback cycle of constant experimentation, survival, failure, etc. Isn't that word evolution? Is there another word I am supposed to use?
So I stand by what I said, if evolution isn't real (i.e. evolution doesn't happen) that all things are complex by-design, and never by uncontrolled processes of iteration and survival, if that is true, then evolutionary algorithms wouldn't work.
Is that really absurd? What am I not getting?
> Isn't that word evolution?
No. As I wrote, evolution is a stronger claim.
Evolution involves feedback but not all feedback is evolution.
Many stable amplifier designs use feedback. Would you claim that the signal being amplified is evolving?
As to man-made entities, yes, their designs are affected by feedback. However, they're also created.
As I said, creationists believe in selective breeding. Their argument wrt evolution is wrt something else, so if you don't understand that....
> So I stand by what I said, if evolution isn't real (i.e. evolution doesn't happen) that all things are complex by-design, and never by uncontrolled processes of iteration and survival, if that is true, then evolutionary algorithms wouldn't work.
You do know that you didn't say that above, right?
However, I'll play along.
Your new claim is wrong because algorithms with feedback can work even if evolution doesn't occur in the wild.
As to your suggestion that evolution is involved in every complex system, I'll ask how stars evolved. They're very complex systems.
There are lots of complex systems. Evolution only applies to the biological ones.
Knuth is Lutheran iirc, he could fall either way, I don't know which. Lutherans are a coin flip.
If that was true, we could identify the intelligent design people by their scientific output. Instead, we find that evolutionists have to look at other evidence to purge them from the ranks of scientists.
Evolution is a big deal so how about using valid arguments?
> Knuth is Lutheran iirc, he could fall either way, I don't know which.
The claim was that creationists can't do any valid science. If you can't look at Knuth's "work product" and tell us whether he's a creationist, the claim is clerly false.
I agree that creationists can't do some types of science, but the actual instances are fairly small.
And that ties back to what science does: Provides explanations with predictive power, as opposed to explanations like "The gods willed it" that provide no predictive power.
If life works on the same laws as all other matter, and we have predictive models for matter in general, then we can better predict what living beings will do and how the world will affect them. That does, in fact, turn out to be the case.
Napoleon: M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this
large book on the system of the universe, and
have never even mentioned its Creator.
Laplace: I had no need of that hypothesis.Unless you're claiming that evolution is the only explanation for complex systems, that's not enough.
And if you are, I'll ask where I can see animals with wheels for locomotion and animals that use internal combustion.
I believe in evolution, but most arguments offered by evolutionists against creationism are crap.
You misunderstand me totally.
> I believe in evolution, but most arguments offered by evolutionists against creationism are crap.
Except for the part where evolution has all the evidence on its side, right?
>You misunderstand me totally.
Let's review. The initial claim was " Not understanding Evolution effectively locks students out from large swaths of science."
I asked "Large in what way?" and provided examples of significant scientific domains that are completely independent of evolution.
You responded with "Large in that evolution describes how complex systems can exist without a creator."
We're talking about science in general, so there are lots of complex systems at issue.
So, what were you trying to say given that context?
>> I believe in evolution, but most arguments offered by evolutionists against creationism are crap.
> Except for the part where evolution has all the evidence on its side, right?
The fact that evolution has all the evidence does not imply that evolutionists make good arguments, as this thread has demonstrated.
This thread has basically been a sequence of "The sky is green, therefore evolution is true."
Evolution means science can be a complete philosophy, replacing traditional origin myths, without relying on religion to postulate a supernatural being pulling the strings behind the scenes. I thought I made that clear, but apparently not.
The more down-to-earth statement is Life isn't magical. Evolution shows how we can end up with the massive variety of life we have now given physics as we know it. (Technically, evolution doesn't speak to the origin of life. Abiogenesis does. But, guess what, abiogenesis isn't magic either.)
> The sky is green, therefore evolution is true.
Well, how about "Gold looks golden, therefore special relativity is true"?
https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/golden_glow/
This gets directly at my second point: All science is connected. That's another way of saying All reality is connected. Which is another thing schools as they are now are lousy at explaining.
That's nice, but isn't expressed by "Large in that evolution describes how complex systems can exist without a creator."
I get that you think that "can be a complete philosophy" is a big deal, but it doesn't actually matter. (Moreover, the fact that evolution can do certain things does not imply that those things were done by evolution any more than the fact that I can drive to the store implies that I did drive to the store.)
Since you disagree, how about some examples of things that one can do with a science that is a complete philosophy? Heck, not even the things that folks do with recombinant DNA depends on evolution. Do you want to argue that physics depends on evolution. (Which reminds me, our physics friends might not agree that evolution makes science "complete". I'm pretty sure it doesn't handle the big bang, for example.)
>> This thread has basically been a sequence of "The sky is green, therefore evolution is true."
> Well, how about "Gold looks golden, therefore special relativity is true"?
How about the color of my car? After all, that has as much connection to the arguements offered in this thread as your attempted "restatement".
Your desire to have a good argument does not imply that you have one.
> This gets directly at my second point: All science is connected.
Yet, you've provided no support for that point.
I'll ask again - how does evolution affect physics? How about geology? Heck - what can I do in biology with evolution that I can't do without? (And no, "explain" doesn't count unless that explanation lets you do something that you can't do without that explanation.)
I'm pretty sure that there are things in biology that one can't do without evolution, but they're in the noise. And, contrary to Nye's claim, there's nothing outside of biology that requires evolution.
As I asked before, what's the point of making clearly false claims about evolution?
> That's another way of saying All reality is connected.
Don't do the brown acid.
> Which is another thing schools as they are now are lousy at explaining.
Which teaching evolution, or not, won't address.
Don't be condescending. You don't have any arguments, just an argumentative attitude, which isn't the same thing.
Says the person who insists that evolution is essential to all science yet doesn't have any examples where it makes any difference.
First of all, the vast majority of US students aren't even proficient enough in reading and math to understand science regardless of what the curriculum consists of. Debating what the science curriculum should consist of is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
But the fact that you hear 10x as much about this issue than about the shameful lack of reading ability in students suggests that this debate is as much about ideology as it is about pedagogy. That was kind of my point.
Yes, it's important, but the fact that people are spending so much time worrying about optimizing something that's largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things says a lot about them.
This said, people in the business of denying evolution are pretty good at containment. It is far from unheard of for people to live "dual lives". There are no rules forcing people to keep their own beliefs self-consistent.
As a set of equations handed down from On High, yes. As a living field that's part of modern physics and has relevance to becoming a productive member of the society we're trying to build, no.
Science isn't dogma. It's all connected by the spirit of questioning and challenging authority.
If a student is shown pictures (or, better yet, up-close-and-personal on a field trip!) of geological strata, and shown how the processes work that formed those features, and then they are given a counter-argument by other authority figures that everything that they've seen there is wrong because faith says so, what is that doing to those students' ability to reason?
Do you not think that a widespread disregard for the easy-to-understand concept of evolution would also spill over into a widespread disregard for other fields of study? Creationism is the color guard of anti-intellectualism; shame on anyone who would try to rationally argue that we should not run it out of our educational institutions with the broadswords of critical thinking and rational curiosity. [1]
Do you think that people who grow up believing that a religious book written nearly 3,000 years ago is more informative on the topic of natural sciences than all of the scientific efforts since will really have any opportunity in the world's science & technology arena? I don't.
Why should we not argue instead in favor of the principles of enlightenment? In the late 1600s, in an effort to defend its religion, the Scottish Kirk established schools around the country that would teach anybody -- no matter their social standing -- the basics of reading and writing. What followed soon after was a period of industrial and technological and economic development in Scotland that rivals any other enlightenment period in Europe.
It takes a remarkable ignorance of human history to argue against education.
If you want to change the communities that these kids come from, you have to teach them how to do it. And that includes teaching them evolution, and making sure that they understand why creationism is bad thinking.
[1]: Nothing personal; I'm not attacking you specifically here, but it is frustrating to see so many "what's the big deal?" comments -- this is precisely the sort of intellectual atmosphere created when 46% of the population rejects basic scientific principles.
I think that's what the debate is actually about. The thing that needs to be "taught" isn't really evolution, it's that their parents/teachers/pastors/authorities can have very basic facts about the world very wrong, and as such kids should learn to think independently. This is why things like evolution and climate change are so threatening.
What's always confused me is that it seems like it would be a lot easier to change religious beliefs to be consistent with facts, instead of the other way around. I don't understand why people are choosing to fight evolution rather than just doing the usual hand-waving magic to explain what science told us, but with a bit of gods and fairies mixed in.
... and the destruction of a lot of carefully-laid religious indoctrination that claims Humans Are Special and therefore could not possibly be related to animals and plants.
That's it, really: Being able to teach evolution means being able to directly contradict religious dogma. Conversely, if you can't teach evolution, you are hamstrung because you cannot contradict religious dogma on any subject.
So winning the ability to teach evolution will be a victory against religion's hold on education, and religious groups obviously do not want to relinquish that hold. Hence the battle.
> The fact that these kids come communities where most of the parents are really dumb has to be hundreds of times more damaging than not getting a day or two worth of lecture.
We're, as a society, unable to make these kids parents not be dumb, or to give kids new parents who are not dumb. The most we can do is educate them.
> I would bet money that the percentage of born again Christians who have a good understanding of the arguments in favor of evolution is about 10x as high as the percentage of 'science-oriented' folks who have a good understanding of all the philosophical concepts referenced in the wiki article on intelligent design.
This is because the philosophical arguments in favor of ID are not relevant to anyone who isn't in a religious group that favors ID.
Also, I personally doubt most born-again Christians have any real idea of what the evidence in favor of evolution is, given how popular the "If apes turned into man why are there still apes?" argument is.
I just do not want him to think that any real scientist even comes close to believing in it. And I know some people do not believe in carbon dating and that is fine too. But the facts as we know it point to us not being plopped down on the earth instantly as the bible suggests.
Teach the facts, let the other stuff be taught in a class on religions or mythology.
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Maybe that was only because I grew up in a particularly open-minded Lutheran church. It wasn't until I got older and was in confirmation classes in middle school that the assistant minister admitted that Christians literally believe the Earth is a few thousand years old. They were always very open to everyone, but they also begrudgingly concluded that homosexuality was a sin when I was in high school Sunday school classes. Incidents like that really helped to jar my personal beliefs and for the first time ever, honestly question what I believed to be true.
Up until then, I partially did believe and partially did what people said. It took a lot of self-reflection (over several years) to realize that my beliefs were a direct result of being told what is "truth" in the religion that everyone I knew was a part of. I've been bringing this up in discussion with three of my friends as I was going through that period, and as a result of their own self-reflection, two have become atheist and one is more or less fed up with organized religion. It's a hard thing to face, and I can't get too upset that people react so defensively when the things they so adamantly and unquestionably believe are questioned by someone else. All I'd ask is that people make an honest effort to step back and evaluate why and how they came to their faith. Very smart people have done some amazing things while also being religious (Issac Newton basically invented modern calculus to explain the gravitational fields of the solar system and their interaction, yet was religious and an alchemist).
Based on the trends of demographics, I think this issue is likely going to sort itself out over time. The only concern is how fast it will go and how much will we delay the progression of knowledge. Long-term trendlines mean far less to the person who is stuck waiting for a turn. You won't be able to berate believers into changing their minds with facts and counterarguments, regardless of their validity. That's not how the human brain works.
As an aside, I just went to a wedding this weekend and got my first direct exposure to a religious event in a couple years now. Having been gone that long, the entire process felt a little creepy. Particularly when everyone kept saying "lord hear our prayer" in unison, out in the middle of the wilderness by a river. Very cult-like, but I had never thought of it that way when I was a member.
I am far less certain of that, at least assuming that we're talking about time scales of a few generations. In fact, I don't think I could ever adequately express my gratitude for people like Sagan and Nye and Attenborough and Tyson; I often wonder if they aren't the only people that are meaningfully preventing a massive, long-term swing into anti-intellectualism and religious doctrine in the U.S.
To expand your argument slightly: kids are naturally curious and open-minded. They don't come out of the womb believing in Jesus, or believing that evolution is wrong. Kids can be reached. Even if they are raised in a household of overbearing creationists, the right teacher will over their career reach at least some of those students and cause them to foster their curiosity.
Teaching evolution to students gives them a chance at a brighter future.
That's why I'm a science evangelist on this topic, as I would be if there were a massive national effort to teach "magical math" alongside Algebra (or to replace Algebra entirely).
It might well be too late to reach a huge number of adults. Their belief system is too stubborn, too hateful of science. But it's not too late to reach their kids, and we must do so with the greatest fervor.
My question for you is, is the method you're describing for making fundamentalists accept a more scientific world-view really effective? Did you leave religion because people shot down your beliefs or because you happened to read or listen to more scientific content on your own?
For me, I was lucky enough to have some fantastically good teachers at school. Religious Education (which taught me about common arguments and problems with the god hypothesis) and Science was a double-whammy of input that more or less disabled any religious beliefs I had from the inside out. None of those teachers attacked my beliefs directly, they just gave me the intellectual tools to do it on my own.
I'm not saying this approach will scale to the masses, but I will however suggest that there could be a more effective route to more rational/scientific thinking in general than just shouting out the answers to the hard questions at the top of our lungs.
It all began by visiting a site that listed bible mistakes, then bible lies, historical inaccuracies, logical contradictions, impossibilities, and then it just escalated from there on. It wasn't until I realized the book was so flawed and wrong that I began searching for what was right. At first when my whole "bible world" came crashing down I went through an identity crisis, depression, and hunger for answers. It was only then that I opened up to science. And years later here I am, finally free.
>Why not just educate Creationists? Because it doesn't work.
This I think is not universally true. Some creationists are not in that deep, and a calm gentle education is all they need.
Some.
It's not nice or pretty, but I absolutely think some people really need harsher treatment than many are willing to give in order for anything to get through. I was fortunate that a few people in my life were willing to put in that effort. It took people I respected intensely being very very blunt with me for me to finally start to listen.
Also, has anyone ever scientifically argued that perhaps our dating techniques are incorrect? Could there be natural ways for the system to be thrown off?
What's fun is that it doesn't matter which technique you use - the numbers turn up the same no matter what. That's why this 'science' thing is so cool.
Measure the error rate of polymerase in lab (the protein which makes your DNA). Calculate the percent difference ("error") between humans and chimpanzees and you can get a ballpark number for the length of time it took for the species to diverge. It's astounding that these numbers end up quite similar to the numbers you get when you find bones, compare the isotope of carbon in it with the known decay rate of Carbon-14, and the ratios of it in our ecosystem. And these numbers correspond quite well between any elemental analysis we know.
Have you ever told a lie? (we'll pretend you have for argument's sake) You know how quickly and difficultly it is to create a story that accords with the lie? And yet somehow telling even the most outlandish of true stories causes not even a momentary fluster? Everything just fits together. Were evolution or such things based on a single finding - then sure, be skeptical. But when evidence from a geologist, a physicist, a geneticist, a radiologist, a biophysicist, and many more all arrive at the same conclusion using wildly different techniques - then be much much less skeptical.
Each user of each technique knows its error and precision. Some techniques can get you +/- a million years out to 100 million years, some +/- a decade out 1,000 years - some +/- a second out 3 days. Or for polymerase - +/- an event every .0001 seconds. But while each idea may be tenuous on its own - they all work in tandem to draw something really powerful. The most robust of these concepts span from the picosecond to 13 billion years - from the picometer to 13 billion light-years. It's fantastic. 200 years ago it was more like the millimeter to the kilometer, from the millisecond to the century.
The main limitation is that carbon dating only works to about 60,000 years (so older figures are never from carbon dating). This is well known.
Less well known is that it only works if the sample has never been soaked in water. This is because the CO2 in water will dissolve into the sample completely overwhelming the original carbon ratios. This probably causes a huge number of errors in the field, unfortunately. Because how many samples have been completely shielded from water for that long?
There are other datings though, but they are less accurate. Usually they are only able to date the rocks near the sample, but not the sample itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating
Most commonly things are actually dated based on fossil and geological evidence, not any type of direct dating. But there is a bit of circular logic in those types of datings. First the rock is dated, and the sample is assumed to be of the same age. Next when other samples of the same type are found they are assumed to be of the same age as the first. The rock formations are then recorded and the appropriate layer is given an estimated age. Which is then used to date other things. Basically, things older than 60,000 years are dated based on what fits the theory best.
If you change the speed of light the energy content of matter changes, and where would that energy come from (or go to)?
If you tried to balance out the change by changing other constants you would end up changing even more things in an impossible cascade.
As for the age of the universe, it's not calculated from the speed of light, but from other things which I do not understand well enough to explain to others.
The rest of the world, even developing countries, look on with astonishment while the US undermines itself after more than 500 years since the Enlightenment!
The form of his argument only encourages the conflict. He clearly feels contempt towards creationists, and even towards those who sympathize with them. As soon as you've shown contempt you've given up on convincing anyone of anything, and are just cheering on your side.
A serious attempt at promoting evolution would emphasize how you can resolve the tension between the theory of evolution and a strong belief in Christianity and The Bible. (There's no reason to pretend this is a general issue, it's a Christian issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution#...)
I'm not a Christian, so I can't write something more authentic than what Bill Nye might (though I damn well could write something less offensive). But I can imagine what the intellectual tensions are. I made an attempt (https://plus.google.com/104537541227697934010/posts/TnMt9Wgf...), something like:
To convince someone of evolution, as a Christian, I'd want to emphasize a reverence for the world as God created it, that He teaches us through the world around us, and that learning from and of that world could never be in contradiction with His word, in the Bible or as shown to us through our faith. The world is full of contradictory messages and lessons, we can't always expect to decide that one is right and another is wrong.
I'd want to probe how the person has chosen to resolve the tension between Bible-as-fact and Bible-as-historical-document. For example, the Bible in many places talks freely and without condemnation about slavery, and clearly this does not fit with a modern understanding of Christian morality. I would hope that the person has seriously considered this problem and come to a resolution. I would hope to find a way to fit evolution, and ongoing scientific discovery in general, into that intellectual template.
Some Creationists might claim, for instance, that something as complicated as the eye could not be made through the incremental changes of evolution – it had to be designed. But this is a terribly limited notion of God. Could not God create a mechanism that would lead to the design of His choosing? Is there a mechanism so complicated that He could not conceive of it and create it?
There is a story of creation in the Bible. It is not a recipe of how to create a world. It is a message given to us to explain the world, a world that we cannot ever fully know. We've found tensions in that story. Consider for instance dinosaur fossils. Some people have considered this and read Genesis, and decided that dinosaurs must have lived in the Garden Of Eden, or been wiped out by the Great Flood. Does the Bible say this? No. There is more in the world than is in the Bible. Does the Bible talk of electricity, or about germs? No. Would we try to create a Biblical basis for this phenomena? No. The Bible covers the entirety of the creation of the Earth in one chapter, would we expect it to be comprehensive? It is our burden to resolve the world we see with the Bible as written. Some decide to ignore the world. This is a lazy approach, God did not give us the world in all its fullness just for us to ignore it.
There's actually a much simpler Christian solution to the intellectual tensions between the creation account and science:
Recognize that the Genesis creation account (traditionally said to be written by Moses, to an audience that lived in Egypt) strongly parallels the Egyptian creation account. It's not a recipe to create a world, nor is it primarily a story about the world. It's a story about how this One God is different from those gods [1].
Some modern Christians have a problem with this response because they view it as a modern watering down of the Bible. Yet some highly respected early Christians, like Origen [2] and Augustine [3], expressed these views. The literalist/creationist view has only been in favor for the last century or so. Prior to that, it was common understanding among many Christians (as well as many Jews) that the creation account was about God's position as sovereign creator of the physical universe, not about the details of the universe itself. It's not literal history; it's a poetic description meant to highlight specific details.
[0] "sophisticated argument requires as an essential condition that you have the good manners to understand before you criticize" - from http://www.uky.edu/OtherOrgs/GainesCenter/Letter%20To%20Jerr... (the "only monologue" line comes from the debate he is responding to.)
[1] I wrote a short introduction to this concept at http://transformedthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/08/genesis-1-in...
Some pretty strong emphasis needs to be placed on the "traditionally" there. There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for the Exodus. It, and necessarily Moses as he is known as well, are fictions.
The truth is far more interesting though. In fact the evolution of the religion that would come to be what we know today as Judaism is a fascinating topic in general.
Agreed -- but it's difficult to find legitimately evidence-based, scholarly works amidst the sea of speculation (secular and religious). Do you have any decent resources?
This doesn't seem like an issue that it makes rational sense to get up in arms about. It seems emotion-driven to me, ironically.
First, can we agree that creationism is a religious doctrine, and thus it's OK to frame this roughly as a debate over the role of religion in science? Because, within that frame, Greta Christina has already made a more articulate argument against religion than I could [1]. The short of her argument is that because religion requires belief in improvable things, that makes it "uniquely armored against criticism, questioning, and self- correction".
And what are some of the most basic principles of science? Criticism, questioning, and self-correction.
If the man on the street were to believe, say, that relativity was wrong, that the world was flat, and that it was actually supported on the back of a giant tortoise, what would that imply about their ability to reason on other topics? Is it wrong to conclude that, for example, they would believe similar fairy tales in fields like economics, politics, social justice, and environmentalism?
The one thing that all of those fields have in common, which makes them more vulnerable to religious principles than other fields of science, is that their support is controlled almost entirely by a democratic population.
So, if you have a large population which believes in creationism -- and therefore can easily ignore all of the overwhelming evidence for evolution in a field of concrete scientific study -- then you likely also will have a large population which believes that the country should close its borders and wage wars against people of other faiths.
The default response to such policies is to try to overwhelm it with facts. You say, "these economic policies haven't worked in X, Y, or Z countries in time periods A, B, or C" ... but the problem is that you're dealing with people who place no stock in things like facts.
(If you're jumping to argue that I'm wrong to draw this correlation, you should be prepared to handle the example of Romney and one of the most fact-challenged campaigns in the history of U.S. politics.)
I think there are lots of other good arguments too, like the fact that it's hard to attract the world's top scientific and engineering talent to a country full of crazy people, which means that you can probably kiss your industrial leadership goodbye. But, honestly, that's not my argument.
For me, widespread belief in creationism is bad for society because it's a gateway belief system to lots of other really bad things.
(Aside: it looks like I get to take up the mantle of Science Evangelist this evening on HN; how much the poorer HN is for it.)
[1]: http://www.alternet.org/print/story/143912/the_top_one_reaso... -- by the way, I am not at all a militant atheist. In fact, I don't even describe myself as an atheist any more due to the current religious-like fervor of New Atheism. I have no problem with people who hold religious beliefs. However, she makes a compelling point that is appropriate as a reference here.
It is entirely a signaling/tribalism question. For example, I get asked whether I'm a creationist on a fairly regular basis by people who a) are aware that I'm religious and b) want to figure out whether that means I should be on the Enemies List. I'm not creationist, so I get marked down as Whee You're A Fellow Scientist (TM). It is not obvious to me that my views on, e.g., the Resurrection would merit that conclusion, but that is not the issue the two tribes picked to wage ultimately meaningless squabbles over.
(Ironically, actual creationists have been pretty tolerant of me not being creationist. My guess is this is because I do not go out of my way to soulcrush them while screaming "I am a threat to your entire way of life.")
It discourages scientific criticism of ideas. When you are taught a scientific fact or theory, you are always welcomed to, and often encouraged to question it. "Why is acceleration 9.81m/s^2? How do I know that it is true as of right now? If I carry out my own experiment, will I see this?" When you listen to the "word of god", this is no longer the case. You know it's right because someone, thousands of years ago, apparently said it is.
Yes, it can waste tax dollars - but we can always make more dollars. An innovative generation that can carry on mankind's survival? That's a little more important.
Why didn't that belief stop them from advancing science?
Why would it now do so?
Unless you count prayer as an attempt to further an understanding of the world through Creationism, I'd say my post was right on the money.
Science is moving forward, creationism is not. Regardless of which is right or which is more justifiable, it's not even debatable, which one promotes the pursuit of knowledge.
Can a creationist benefit scientific knowledge? Will a person benefit scientific knowledge more by choosing creationism over evolution? I doubt it, at least in a general case.
Then based on that reasoning, (and this is the nuanced part), you may find your self opposed to things which are based on scientific investigation and a risk to the community. The most popular example is vaccination risks and benefits.
One of the problems is that people are told that to believe in science means you cannot believe in God, and they have a strong belief in God so of the two they toss science rather than God out of their life. Its a poor choice.
EDIT: I, like patio11 apparently, believe in both God and science. So its possible :-).
Rationally speaking, if you're very vexed about vaccinations, you should ask whether someone is in favor of vaccinations, rather than attempting to guess their opinion on vaccinations by asking something orthogonal. If someone is opposed to vaccinations, it matters to you little whether that is because they're in the Tribe of UnScience (as evidenced by being biblical literalists) or if they're, e.g., against vaccinations because they're strict vegans and morally opposed to anything which might, at any point, involve an animal protein.
Typically a counter example in creationism is to question dating methods, but without any reasoning as to how the dating methods are inaccurate (beyond the inaccuracies recognized by the community). Your counter example of animal proteins based on a preference for Veganism is fine, but if I showed you that the vaccination process never came close to an animal protein would you still reject it? And in rejecting it would you reject the entire herd immunity thesis or are you limiting to rejecting a belief in the efficacy of the vaccine on your personal health?
Understanding reasoned debate is critical to understanding science and the process by which it comes to hold its beliefs. If you reject that then you both reject learning something new and the ability of science to be strengthened by your doubts.
You're using the word 'believe' in two different ways here, I hope.
'Belief' in science means 'I have seen the evidence and it convinces me' or else you don't know how science works.
'Belief' in God means 'I believe because it is absurd' or similar; that's how religion works.
I really hate how the same word can have two completely opposite meanings like that.
I'll claim that you can believe in the existence of God and not be Religious, and you can be Religious and not believe in the existence of God. The error is inferring one from the other.
You need look no further than the example that the Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Mormon Religions all have the same 'God' at their center, but very different rules for their members. Christians have Protestant/Catholic schisms, Muslims Shia/Sunni schisms, etc. So it is always risky to conclude that a belief in God conveys a particular religious alignment, it may mean a particular alignment but it may easily not mean that. There is no dependency requirement to be met.
I would disagree with this, on the grounds that the definition of religion basically pertains to your beliefs about the origins of the universe.
That being said, you can believe in god and be an atheist. (E.g. Einstein fell into the category for much of his life.)
Einstein is a popular example cited by both sides because he's become the very caricature of a scientist, and because he said things which satisfies many religious views.
I own a copy of The Quotable Einstein, and that book has several nice qualities: it is short (and easy to browse); it is organized by subject; and within each subject, the quotes are organized chronologically.
So it is easy for me to see that Einstein's views on God and religion changed throughout his life, and as he became older, he left his belief in a personal God and moved towards a belief system where "God" merely referred to the intrinsic beauty of what Einstein saw as the laws that govern the universe.
For example, in 1915: "Why do you write to me, 'God should punish the English'? I have no close connection to either one or the other. I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him." (In a letter to Edgar Meyer, a Swiss colleague. Note that here Einstein is not actually claiming a lack of belief in such a deity -- yet.)
In 1930: "I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual who survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts." (From "What I believe".)
In 1952: "My feeling is religious insofar as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insufficiency of the human mind to understand more deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as 'laws of nature'."
In 1953: "To assume the existence of an unperceivable being ... does not facilitate understanding the orderliness we find in the perceivable world."
In 1955: "I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism."
People who say that Einstein "believed in God" should read more of what he wrote. :-)
Theism is belief in a personal god. So if you believe in god but not a personal god then you are an atheist.
You are maybe misunderstanding the definition of atheism due to the difference between theism and deism; however, atheism by definition is a rejection of both.
"Atheism is the view that there is no God. Unless otherwise noted, this article will use the term “God” to describe the divine entity that is a central tenet of the major monotheistic religious traditions–Christianity, Islam, and Judaism."
From the Wikipedia article on atheism:
"Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists."
Now from the Wikipedia article on theism:
"Theism [...] conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe. As such theism describes the classical conception of God that is found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam and some forms of Hinduism."
I don't have any a better source than Wikipedia, although you could check the footnotes, of which there are many. My basic claim though is that atheism doesn't just mean that you believe there is no god, it means that you believe there is no theistic god. (Hence the word.) Theism is the belief not that there is a god, but that there is a personal god.
Likewise, reading further down in the article I cited supports both your view and mine.
The very first paragraph of http://atheists.org/atheism is, "Atheism is the lack of belief in a deity, which implies that nothing exists but natural phenomena (matter), that thought is a property or function of matter, and that death irreversibly and totally terminates individual organic units. This definition means that there are no forces, phenomena, or entities which exist outside of or apart from physical nature, or which transcend nature, or are “super” natural, nor can there be. Humankind is on its own."
Reddit's atheism subreddit -- generally regarded as the largest online forum for atheists, so not exactly without repute -- has a FAQ (http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/faq#Whatisatheism) which clearly states, "There is no inherent relationship between atheism and a religion. A person can be both atheist and religious, provided that he or she believes in a religion that does not have any deities, such as some forms of Buddhism."
I anonymously posted an excerpt of our conversation to that same subreddit, at http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/10gt4a/so_apparentl.... It didn't get much attention, but the responses so far aren't really in your favor, either.
You keep finding really tiny bits of language in various articles to try to draw the conclusion that atheism only means a lack of belief in the Western ideal of a singular, personal God, even though you can't bring to bear any article which comes right out and clearly states that. But, I'm finding it difficult to find anything that clearly says your position is wrong (and some articles do kind of, sort of, almost support your position, given the sort of narrow interpretation you're using); I'm inclined to attribute that more to having never in my life read or heard atheism described the way you are trying to use it. It's a little like trying to find an article that specifically states, "God does not have a beard that is blue in color."
But, most importantly, you seem like a pretty nice guy, you've been around HN for even longer than I have, you seem otherwise perfectly reasonable, and as far as I can tell we've never fought before. Whether some guy on the internet believes that atheism includes beliefs in "impersonal deities" or not, or whether Einstein was an atheist or not, really doesn't matter to me, nor do I have the time or desire to continue arguing about it.
I am far more interested in public education continuing to teach the foundations of basic sciences, which is the only reason I got involved in this thread to begin with.
So rock on, brother.
Wikipedia could definitely be wrong, but honestly I don't think I'm interpreting it especially charitably. The article on Theism literally says, "Theism [...] conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe. Theism describes the classical conception of God that is found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam and some forms of Hinduism. [...] Atheism is rejection of theism in the broadest sense of theism; i.e. the rejection of belief that there is even one deity."
When I read that something just clicked in my mind that you could both believe in god and be an atheist at the same time. I dunno if that's true, but you have to admit it's a great way to mess with people.
As the term is actually used, atheism is the lack of faith in the supernatural. Look up 'dictionary atheist' on Google sometime.
A god is a specific kind of dogma, namely a supernatural being that's worshiped, and it's true that not all religions have gods. All gods are attached to religions, though, by my definitions of the terms.
> So it is always risky to conclude that a belief in God conveys a particular religious alignment
This I agree with.
It's kind of derailing my main point, though, which is: Science does not have dogma. Everything in science is open to be challenged. (Ideally. Sometimes, however, individual scientists don't live up to the ideal, and dealing with them is also part of science.)
If I understand your statement correctly, you are classifying God as a kind of dogma, which makes the notion of God a sub-concept of religion.
Fair enough, I have the opposite relationship which is that God as an independent concept of religion. My claim was that since several religions share the same God, God is an independent variable.
One of the nice features of my taxonomy is that you can throw out the entire system of dogma for a given religion and still believe in God. This seems to be the underlying mechanism in a theological conversion as well.
I recognize that if you're understanding of God is entirely dictated though the teachings of a particular religion, that it can be difficult to reason about God independently of those teachings.
Not unlike trying to reason about how a computer's CPU works if your only exposure is through a single programming language. It is hard to know which constraints or features of the CPU are part of the architecture of the CPU and which are artifacts of the expressive power of the language.
Science fits together. When you deny the existence of biological evolution, decide the earth is under 10,000 years old, and say there is no such thing as the big bang, you end up with huge gaps in the scientific explanation of the universe.
Once you do this, the world and the universe it sits in transforms from a place of logic and explainable order to one of superstition and chaos. If the earth is 10,000 years old, how is the Milky Way galaxy 100,000 light years in diameter? If there is no biological evolution, is genetic science a pseudo-science?
Creationism taught in others ways is little better.
This type of thinking destroys IQs.
It hurts because it is not just one man out there who is willfully ignorant about reality. There are a very large number of people in the US who believe that the world is only 6,000 years old, that everything is going to end any day now, that the environment isn't really worth protecting because of that, and by extension that it's not really worth doing anything meaningful. The religious people still vote, and their votes shape our policy. If their churches tell them to vote one way, and they do, the authority of the religiously fueled motivations highly define the results.
We have Senators in the Senate and Representatives in the House of Representatives; both can be called Congressmen or Congresswomen, but that term is more usually reserved for Representatives.