Great Britain is catching up to the U.S. when it comes to the rejection of evolution by natural selection. Consider the following from The Guardian:
Half of British adults do not believe in evolution, with at least 22% preferring the theories of creationism or intelligent design to explain how the world came about, according to a survey.
The poll found that 25% of Britons believe Charles Darwin‘s theory of evolution is “definitely true”, with another quarter saying it is “probably true”. Half of the 2,060 people questioned were either strongly opposed to the theory or confused about it.
"Confused about it" describes most of the deniers. All the Scientific Creationists and Intelligent Designers are dedicated to disproving the theory (that our lives actually depend on) by dissecting misinterpretations, and by holding long-discarded ideas up to ridicule as if they were current thought.
I'd like to know where The Guardian drew the line between "confused" and "opposed".
How disappointing that more people don't read Darwin's books. Unlike, say, Newton's 'Principia' or Einstein's theories of relativity, Darwin's works are easily accessible to a lay audience. His arguments are clear and compelling — a big reason why they have stood the test of time.
Humor piece: Ambivalence to Darwin in Kansas. http://unfairlybalanced.com/archive/slides/Not%20…
60% of those exposed to Darwinisn reject it for what it is…the atheist creation myth. Why? Because it is riddled with holes, frauds and inconsistancies- no missing link, no explanation for the origin of life etc…Face it, less than 2.3% of the world's population are atheists. EPIC FAIL!
Miles: I bet it felt good to right that comment, but you don't show any evidence that you understand the scientific theory you have just attempted to criticize. All of these objections have been answered. There are no frauds in the current scientific understand other than creationists like you who pretend that they understand they theory but haven't taken the time to read even a single good book on the topic. I would suggest this: Go read Kenneth Miller's book ( http://dangerousintersection.org/2009/04/13/kenne… ) or something comparably self-critical. Show that you've actually tried to think like a scientist, such that you can explain the theory your are attempting to criticize. Only then can we have a conversation.
As far the number of atheists, it depends how you define the category. Consider this:
According to a 2005 USA Today/Gallup poll, 14.1 percent of Americans do not follow any organized religion. This percentage has almost doubled from only 8 percent in 1990.
There are now more Americans who say they are not affiliated with any organized religion than there are Episcopalians, Methodists and Lutherans combined. http://bgnews.com/infocus/non-theism-gains-more-f…
Not that truth is a matter of vote. It wouldn't matter if I were the only person on Earth who didn't believe in an invisible man with no body who supposedly created the universe. There is no evidence for such a being.
I invite you to come back for a real conversation, which we can only have once you have done some homework.
Miles,
It's more likely 60% of those "exposed" to Darwin simply don't understand it. (Not sure what Exposed means in this context.) It is complicated in detail even though fairly simple is concept. Probably most of those people have been exposed to straw man arguments ("do you really think you're descended from a chimpanzee? And if it's true, how come there aren't any half monkey-half humans walking around?") who then reject these propositions out of hand on emotional bases, not knowing enough to recognize blatant bullshit when they hear it. The theory is not "riddled with frauds and inconsistencies" but you would have to do a lot of reading in the field to realize this. Darwinism—the theory of Evolution (and do we have to say once more that in science a Theory is an explanation of how something actually works, not a guess, which is called a hypothesis?)—is well established, well-tested, well-observed, demonstrated in the lab and identified in the field. It is not wrong.
As to the number of atheists on the planet, I'm not sure where you got your stats, but you have to bear in mind one fact—there are still a lot of places on the globe where admitting you're an atheist CAN GET YOU KILLED. That would, I think, tend to skew the numbers a bit, don't you think?
So instead of the science being an EPIC FAIL, it seems your critique is EPIC NONSENSE. I suggest you go read a book—a science book, by a real scientist, someone who is actually qualified to write about the subject he or she is discussing.
People can discuss evidence for and against belief in inductive premises without needing to commit to them.
Belief in any inductive universal premise has to be a leap of faith that one is willing to commit to.
Just like anyone can discuss evidence for or against what some would call the biggest inductive leap of faith, i.e. belief in a creator God.
I can honestly and say I don't have all the evidence I would like to have, but I have enough to satisfy my ongoing belief in a creator. I continually try to consider the interpretations of physical evidence from more than one perspective to see which makes clearer sense. Stating that because a person has to to understand it before one can believe it is frankly like saying one has to blindly reject that they have chosen to believe in the interpretations of science before the evidence is fully understandable.
Likewise those who put evolution at odds with a creator God have interlocked their interpretation of the physical evidence to such a degree so as to satisfy their ongoing belief in evolution?
Here are the two versions of the creation story side by side. I think I know which one Miles prefers to believe. http://dailyshite.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/…
Erich or Dan, Tell me how matter can exist before light?
Karl: I don't know that matter did exist before light. Therefore, your question contains an unproven (and therefore potentially false) premise, that you know that matter existed before light. I assume they came into existence at the same time, but here's the bottom line: "I don't know."
Not very satisfying, is it. Maybe someday we'll know, but I don't refer to ancient books by non-scientist to answer science questions, especially potentially misleading science questions.
I didn't say matter existed before light but the cute cartoon you offer for us to consider is simply more fodder. It doesn't do justice to either perspective.
http://dailyshite.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/…
It does however seem to indicate like most other naturalistic theories about origins that matter/energy has always existed in some form or another.
I prefer to think that all physical matter began as energy (light) which initially had much greater speeds (some beyond our measuring) with nearly infinite wavelength, which both created and filled the Universe. Like an infinite number of Mobius strips.
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Light actually came before matter, given any of the cosmologies that explain the observed expansion of space. PV∝T applies. Going backwards in time, as density increases and the total temperature of space rises, Atoms ionize, then nuclei break down into quarks, then dissolve into mesons and pure energy.
Photons (packets of light) therefore had to exist in the hotter, denser states before it was cool enough for matter such as electrons and protons to exist.
But darkness didn't exist until much, much later. The real issue of separating dark from light didn't matter until matter was cold enough not to glow. We're talking inside-of-stars background temperatures for millions of years after the beginning.
Karl writes:—”Stating that because a person has to to understand it before one can believe it is frankly like saying one has to blindly reject that they have chosen to believe in the interpretations of science before the evidence is fully understandable.”
My first reaction to this was “Huh?” On reflection, this is a very telling sentence.
There are a couple of loaded words the, namely “blindly” and “fully.” They imply extremes of being that are not necessary to a skeptical position.
The chief problem here is the word “Belief.” A thorough understanding of what is meant by this word ought to be set out. When I say “I believe” it must be understood that I mean something different than say a devoutly religious person means when talking about their faith. What I mean is that for the time being I provisionally accept something to be the case. I may accept it to such an extent that I will pattern my thinking on it. It may even appear that I accept that no other explanation is possible.
But I am always ready to be persuaded that my stated belief is false. Not willingly, perhaps, but I reserve my total commitment against the chance that I am wrong.
I find the truly dedicated Believer does not do this. It may be—I “believe” this to be the case—that the Believer has taken his/her belief and internalized it to such an extent that it becomes one with their identity and that to turn away from that belief would be a de facto denial of who they are. This is just shy of suicide for some and it is certainly understandable that they would fight tooth and nail to avoid it.
But for me, the “blind rejection” of a proposition is not at all necessary or viable. Accepting something conditionally until its validity can be demonstrated or its falseness shown is only common sense. Because in the main, unless you are a specialist in something (like Evolution and Darwinism) “fully” understanding something is simply not possible or practical for most of us. So we grade on a curve, so to speak.
Belief is not, however, the willing acceptance of what is self-evidently true. Consider a rather outre example.
The kids who were involved in the McMartin PreSchool affair back in the early 80s. It has been proven that the allegations made on their behalf (by an overzealous district attorney supporting the claims of a mentally disturbed woman) are without exception false. Yet the trial took so long, these kids grew up being told by many that these things happened to them. A curious thing resulted. Many of these kids came to believe that the abuses occurred, that these events transpired, that they were victims of all the bizarre claims made by the prosecution, and when the defendants were acquitted many of these kids suffered considerable anguish that they had been betrayed.
Well, they had, but not in the way they thought. Over time and repeated insistence by the adults around them, they came To Believe in something that was not real. It had become part of who they were. That evidence existed to prove they were wrong about what they believed seemed to make no difference. They were convinced.
This is the exact pathology of religious believe, in my opinion. It is not a healthy way to believe something. It goes beyond any examination of claims or evidence and becomes so wired into the personality as to be a separate condition of Being.
You mighty make the claim that believers in science exhibit the same pathology—and maybe some who a little more than fans of science may well do that—but it is not the same because science teaches that all things are, however remotely, provisional. Identity is not based on the thing examined but on the approach to the examination. This is very different.
So no, your comparison does not hold up. You have it inside out. No wonder there is such a disjunction between what you say and some of our arguments.
Sorry.
Dan,
Your definition of darkness seems to mean only absorption of light by larger amounts of matter.
If darkness is defined as the absence of light I would have to disagree with your conclusion that darkness only came into existence when energy which changes into matter began removing light energy from the purely energy domain.
If the universe did not exist before light was somehow able to fill and establish it, then there as an absence of light in the place that would be filled and established by this energy.
Ergo, the darkness or emptiness of a potential space would need to be displelled initially like a set needs to be filled with elements before if is no longer a hull set.
Karl,
Cosmologically speaking, "darkness" and "light" are points along a spectrum. The "rumble" from the Big Bang is of a kind with the electromagnetic radiation that comprises everything up to and beyond the visible spectrum. Just because you can't "see" something doesn't mean there is no light.
Absorption of particles is a different matter.
Karl, before the Big Bang (or cyclic compression, or budding singularity event, pick your cosmology) there was no space in which to have darkness. The universal expansion observed is the expansion of space itself, not of matter within space.
Light (defined as photon energy) is the hottest primeval form of thing-ness. Light condenses to a zoo of elementary particles, of which the ones most people understand are made. Like vapor freezing to crystals as things cool, so do high density photons cool to matter.
E=MC<sup>2</sup> literally says, Energy is Matter (times a constant to make the units line up). Every experiment done to try to falsify this has confirmed it. At high enough temperatures, matter simply evaporates into more energy.
The relatively few photons given off by a supernova or star are like the few loose vapor atoms given off by ice in a freezer as it sublimes. The heart of a supernova is cool compared to early stages of the universe. Its energy condenses into matter so fast that it clumps together into big atoms and freezes that way.
Dan,
In your cosmological options of a Big Bang or a cyclic compression, or a budding singularity I still can't see why you hold to there being "no space" in which to have darkness. It seems to be an assumption beyond what science can tell us. If energy has always been in existence somewhere, then how can its flow from one dimension to another even occur if there are not corridors of connectedness between the dimensions?
A black hole moving energy and mass from or through one dimension to another certainly needs a framework of some sort to its existence between the dimensions to consider that it can accomplish such a task.
In a cosmology where spirit and intelligent design is anathema, you have a statement is rather difficult to prove by scientific means. Your assumption of there not being some amount of empty space, at least of some size, that was expanded upon is a rather dogmatic way of looking at what is actually seen in the vastness of space.
Are you assuming that this null hypothesis is not true or false, unknowable, or perhaps not even worth consideration?
Mark, many times throughout recorded history people claiming to be doing science have constructed "understandings" of the physicsal world which have been nothing more than beliefs when they have been proven to be in error.
The statement you quoted is certainly telling because it applys especially to those who seek to look at evidence from only one perspective, and who formulate the interpretation of other evidences in ways so as to not rock the boat with waves that one day might capsize the boat.
Many people can parse language and redefine terms to defend either their ideology or even their actions, myself included.
Karl, the point that is hardest for people grounded in common sense to "get" (as opposed to those having the integral and tensor calculus to understand the equations that match/explain all observations) is that space itself does not need an external place in which to exist. And space itself is expanding. All the expansion observations are not about how matter and energy are expanding into space, but rather how the universe of space, time, matter and energy are growing.
The Big Bang is not like a chemical or nuclear explosion of matter conversion into empty space. It is the growth of space itself. As space gets bigger, there is more room, so the contents cool.
As for only one perspective: It is the perspective of trying to find the simplest rigorous and testable explanations that explain all observations. Science. Old folk tales simply fail to match the observations.
And even if everything we now understand about the Big Bang is wrong, that has no effect on the relatively recent occurrence of biological evolution. That's only been evident for the last few percent of the observed age of the universe (about 500 million out of over 13,500 million).
Black holes are real, observed, and getting to be better understood every year. Unlike in sci-fi, they do not remove matter or energy from the universe; they temporarily cordon it off. Black holes do evaporate. Given enough time, even galactic sized ones, like the one we observe at the center of our own galaxy, will give back its matter. A very long time, in comparison to the microscopic age of the universe so far.
One has to get used to perceiving things at different time scales in order to understand quantum or cosmological events. I've worked with designing things where watching a signal crawl slowly across an integrated circuit at the speed of light is necessary to understanding how a microprocessor will behave. I've worked with people who view the historical flipping of the Earth's magnetic field like a daily weather report. I was raised by someone who observed exotic isotopes with half-lives on the order of nano-seconds that have traveled for millenia before decaying, due to Lorentz contraction.
Black holes can only be understood given the full breadth of time scales, from the Planck time quantum fluctuations of zero-point energy to the near-infinite time expansion of crossing the Schwartzschild radius after the Chandrasekhar limit is passed.
And black holes are not dark. Matter breaks down to energy as it crosses the event horizon. Some fraction of the energy radiates out. It doesn't take many atoms converted to energy to be visibly bright, and even empty deep space has several atoms per cubic meter.
Dan,
The question was, are you assuming that this null hypothesis is not true or false, unknowable, or perhaps not even worth consideration?
Apparently you consider it not even worth consideration by the list of your accomplishments in abstract modelling.
There is more than atoms moving through what is considered by most people to be empty space. Just the movement of various forms of detectable electromagnetic energy alone through this space in essence fills this region so it can not be considered empty.
My point, which you did not address, is that a model that assumes space only exists when there is energy or mass of some sort to fill it is not a testable hypothesis as far as I understand null hypotheses.
Karl, check out this FREE illustrated book on evolution. It is written by scientists, so you can trust the information in it.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=…
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=…
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=…
I am puzzled by Karl's use of "null hypothesis." Can anyone explicitly tell me what this particular "null hypothesis" is?
Electromagnetic energy is photons. If you've read your Feynman, you know that the photons may not actually exist in an objective sense until they have other particles to intercept them. They are virtual particles; convenient models to represent transitions between things that can be detected. They have no rest mass; zero. But they can impart energy/mass to other mass.
So space is full of photons like the sky is full of airplane flights; there in potential, but not in actuality until there is a departure and arrival. Except that the only way to detect a photon is to destroy it.
Dan,
Let me give you some clearer wording. I was asking about what I think you believe concerning the relationship between space, matter and energy, i.e. that space is only present when there is something to fill it.
From what you write, you state more or less that empty space doesn't exist and never has been required to exist because the current cosmological models don't require it, in fact they pretty much assume that it didn't/couldn't exist because there would be no way of positively demonstrating it existence.
You can not prove using science the non-existence of something that isn't matter or energy as you are able to study it. You can't prove stuff like intelligent design because it has no scientific merits for its consideration.
The same goes for the existence of empty space before an attempted scientific model tries to portray that space is required to come into existence as this space is now required to satisfy the premises of the model.
A null hypothesis regarding this would be stated something like evidence for the existence of a region in space without matter or energy to somehow fill this space to some degree or another is impossibility.
Honest null hypotheses are supposed to be phrased in the negative sense so that when they are shown to be false the opposite has some kind of chance of being correct.
The problem is that there will never be scientific proof against such a statement because of the semantics of the language used in its construction. Its like saying that in the past at some point there was non-life that gave rise to living things. Science can not positively show that non-life gave rise to living things, but it chooses instead to say that a living thing on a different dimension of existence could not have created life in the physical world as we know it.
Kind of like why many naturalists can not come to any positive physical proof for the existence of a creator God so they will not consider it possible because it doesn't fit with their cosmology.
Can a null set exist in mathematics? Can a null set exist in the mind of a scientific naturalist?
I never said that empty space didn't exist. Just that the expansion of the universe is of space, not into it. All observations, and the math necessary to explain how things work, indicate that there was no space before the Big Bang. In fact, Einstein's General Relativity predicted that space itself was changing size a decade before Hubble independently observed and proved that it was expanding.
Try this primer: Q & A: How is the Universe so big, given its age?
The language of science is math, not English. There are few semantic difficulties if you know the correct language for a subject. There are many semantic difficulties trying to explain this math in words to people who generally don't even know that types of math are necessary to describe our world.
There will never be a proof of, or against, "God" until there is a rigorous definition of God in some language that allows for proof or disproof. Believers are unlikely to make this happen, and doubters have no interest in trying.
"There will never be a proof of, or against, “God” until there is a rigorous definition of God in some language that allows for proof or disproof. Believers are unlikely to make this happen, and doubters have no interest in trying."
Dan, thanks for this excellent succinct analysis.
Dan,
Any proof of which you speak that model the existence of God could be defined as carefully as anyone would like, but people who didn't want to believe in God would simoly haggle over the semantics of what the symbolz ae really describing.
What has always puzzled me is this: why assume the existence of something for which no evidence exists and then invest that assumption with so much enthusiasm, weight, and significance that you would then deny the evidence of what does exist just to maintain an unprovable assumption.