Okay, can we possibly get one evolution thread going on Great Debates that isn’t started or derailed by mysticism or psuedoscience? I’m mean, come on! It is a fascinating subject with entire libraries of real scientific information, hot internal debates over the mechanisms, and informed, intelligent opinions by educated SD posters, but in spite of this (and the attmepts by many posters to take it up to this level), it always becomes a evolution vs creationism issue. How stupid is that? May as well compare apples and taxicabs.
I see it posted over and over in these threads that the whole science vs. religion debate (which is itself virtually an urban legend, historically speaking, with a few notable exceptions) is only carried on by ignorant people or those with a political agenda. There are plenty of people out there who are deeply religious that know there is no conflict, but you get one or two people like Nicoli, capacitor, or Wildest Bill and the whole discussion becomes another useless exercise in trying to convert the willfully ignorant. Now, I know the purpose of the SD is to fight ignorance, but these people DO NOT WANT TO LEARN! We end up exhausting ourselves to no purpose when we keep explaining the same thing over and over to someone who is not here to be educated, but is here to proselytize in a safe, anonymous environment.
As a layperson attempting to educate myself, I have a lot of questions about the various mechanisms that drive evolution and the current thoughts and theories regarding them (gradualism and punk eek, for instance), but hesitate to start any thread about them because of what it is likely to devolve into. Maybe I’ll start one anyway, not only to get some info for myself but to see if it is possible to have an interesting and educated discussion of evolution without anyone mentioning the words god, creation, or atheist agenda.
Lucie, I’d say “go for it” to a discussion on evolution that didn’t devolve into evolution vs. creationism. The main reason being that I think both extremes represent over-deterministic crocks. Both are used to justify the perpetual existence of just about anything one wants to justify or excuse in the world as we find it.
One of the things I found most interesting about the infamous Kansas school board (now voted out of office, from what I understand) was that they rejected “macroevolution,” but not “microevolution.” What that means is that it was fine to toss out the idea the human species evolved from other animal forms. But, once you tossed that out the door was wide open to use evolution to argue that, say, one race or one sex is more highly evolved than another. Hypocritical, racist, sexist fucks!
But perhaps you weren’t exactly looking for a debate about evolution that would devolve into nature vs. nurture
Hey, I’m up for anything that begins with the very unradical assumption that evolution, like shit and grace, happens. Nature vs nurture, sure, bring it on. Cure my ignorance!
Maybe I’ll start with a more circumspect thread, one that doesn’t use the “e” word, to confound the enemy. Suggestions cheefully accepted. Maybe “Sexual Dimorphism in Australopithicenes”. Of course, using the word sexual in the title will drag all the kibitzers into the fray.
There have been a couple of threads about evolution that didn’t end up as c vs. e – but if you put one in Great Debates, it’s likely going to end up as, well, a debate. What else would you discuss about evolution in GD? I guess you could discuss Gould vs. Dawkins (punctuated equilibrium vs. neo-Darwinism).
Anyway, if you want to try to open such a thread, just note in the OP that you would prefer the creationists stay out. In general, people will abide by your wishes (though certainly not always).
If you just want to LEARN about evolution, post a question in GQ. The mods there won’t let it turn into a creation/evolution thread.
I won’t claim to cure your ignorance as you may well be more learned than I am on the topic. I’m happy to agree that evolution–like shit–happens. Only I’m also of the opinion that the overemphasis on evolution is shit-like in several other respects.
I’m not talking about theoretical debates within educated evolutionary circles, a la David B’s reference to Gould v. Dawkins. I’m talking about the pop version of the new (and scientifically dubious) field of evolutionary psychology that you get in places like Newsweek every once in a while. Thanks to that kind of talk you get people talking about schoolkids as “alphas” again, as though it’s seriously possible to predict who’s going to be successful (whatever that might mean) from who pushes harder in the kindergarten playground.
I don’t discount the importance of genes,which do seem to account for certain temperamental differences and abilities–up to a point. But I believe mightily in the power of nurture. With only the rarest exceptions I think that individual, family and social experiences make us who we end up being much more than our genes do.
But that opinion is almost impossible to quanitfy. Which is why this debate has been around since long before Chucky D. took his big trip on the Beagle. Again, Lucie, not sure if this was the non-creationist discussion you were hoping for!
Wiping the remains of me da moron off my shoe Phew, I think I stepped in something.
Anyway. Mandelstam, I think evolutionary psychology is a very different topic than evolution as a science. Probably would need a different thread.
I’ve got to say I agree with the OP 100% I’m one of the evolution groupies on the boards, but I usually quit reading a thread when a blockhead shows up. IIRC, there have been one or two pretty cogent threads on evolution, and they usually included a request in the OP that creationists stay the hell out of it. Give it a shot.
FTR: one of the few places where Inherit the Wind came close to presenting the facts of the Scopes Monkey Trial was that the actual conviction was for breaking the law regarding the teaching* of Evolution. From a legal standpoint, the accuracy of evolutionary theory was irrelevant. The place to challenge the law was in the legislature. A law banning the teaching of evolution is bad pedagogy, but it is not inherently unconstitutional. (A law insisting that Creationism be taught is unconstitutional because it imposes a religious belief on the classroom; a law banning the teaching of Evolution simply presents a hole in the curriculum.)
Inherit the Wind, of course, is wonderful melodrama and horrible history.
I think the courts would probably take a look at why such a law was passed. If it’s obvious that it was passed for religious reasons, I think they might overturn it.
I base this in part on the courts overturning some “moment of silence” laws because they were passed for obviously religious reasons.
I agree with the David B. on the constitutional question. It’s hard to imagine a new law banning the teaching of evolution not being challenged and, if challenged, overturned. (The ban that existed in Tennessee and prompted the Scopes trial was repealed some time in the 1960s, I think; maybe the 1970s). The Kansas school board last year didn’t attempt to ban teaching evolution; they only removed macroevolution from the standard curriculum. As I understand it, that meant teachers could teach evolutionary origins but didn’t have to.
Smeghead, I agree with you. But I’d like to hear an evolutionary psychologist say that!
Pardon my asking, but isn’t Smeghead head a strange choice of handle for a person interested in evolution???
“One, you lock the target. Two, you bait the line. Three, you slowly spread the net…”
The Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas, in 1968, that a law forbidding the teaching of evolution in schools was in violation of the first amendment. The Tennesse law was repealed in 1967, according to a footnote in the case.
Maybe its not that they don’t want to learn, but that they actually ignore posts with flames in them? Forcing them to ignore the whole thread because every single post is flaming them for stating what they believe in.
Of course I’m too mad to rationally debate evolution right now as on another board a atheist was claiming evolution is “just a theory”, so much for that being creationist rethoric.
This can’t be the true reason. This type of behavior is not allowed in GD and you know it.
Perhaps the creationists have too much invested in their beliefs. And rather than revise those beliefs to accomodate the overwhelming scientific evidence, they’d rather toss rationality out the window than admit they might be mistaken.
Uncle Beer, that is rather well put. I haven’t seen the creationists Lucie was referring to action, so I don’t know their style. It does seem, however, that so-called “creation science,” which has been promoted and endorsed by people with enough educational credentials to give it the stamp of rationality, has made a lot of headway. Perhaps these kinds of arguments are what gives the creationists the idea that they belong in “rational” debates about scientific matters.
Smeghead, I can’t exactly say why, but something about the “smeg” prefix brings invertibrate organisms to mind.
