Tell them to watch a snowflake form.
These are the same people who argue that the arrangement and order of fossils in the geologic column is caused by hydrologic sorting. Basically ‘use whatever argument shuts down the current line of inquiry as fast as possible’
I think many evolution doubters come from what might be termed the entropy argument: they simply don’t see how anything new or more complex can arise from something simpler.
Yes, I believe that argument was simply the accepted theory of nature, and all scientists thought they were serving God by discovering all the design he did in making all the odd life forms… that is until Darwin used evolution to shown that a higher being (God) was just unnecessary to explain the existence of complex life. Don’t need him.
With the theory of evolution in hand, all of life’s biologic complexities just become the natural extent of time, reproduction variation, and changing environments and such.
Yes, you are quite right. You can lead, but can’t force a horse to drink and all.
While the last several posts are all true, on review, I think a distinction should be made:
Are there accessible materials out there that explain micro- and macro-evolution to anybody genuinely interested in learning about them? Yes, absolutely, some even given in this thread. There are great webpages and videos readily available.
Are there such materials that are guaranteed (or at least have a high probability) of inducing a “come to Jesus” moment to somebody who is actively resistant to those concepts? Of course not - this is obvious by cursory inspection of modern society.
So, what seems to be the limit of what we can achieve is to have that material out there, as we have already done, and be available when people do have their own flashes of insight that bullheaded dogma may not be the best approach to figuring out the truth of the universe. To be fair, that moment may never come for some, but it’s not something you can really force, either.
I find mention of ring species can be a pretty good start: ask them about a situation where Group A can interbreed with Group B, and Group B can interbreed with C, and C with D, but A can’t interbreed with D — and really have them go into detail with you about ways in which such a state of affairs could come into being — and then ask them what would happen if, for example, Group B died out.
Are there any extant species like that?
Here’s a thing with salamanders: “The complex forms a horseshoe shape around the mountains, and though interbreeding can happen between each of the 19 populations around the horseshoe, the Ensatina eschscholtzii subspecies on the western end of the horseshoe cannot interbreed with the Ensatina klauberi on the eastern end.”
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1217034110
Currently, the best documented example of a ring species is that of the greenish warblers, which inhabit a ring around the Tibetan Plateau (11). In the northernmost area of this ring are two Siberian taxa that are reproductively isolated and occupy overlapping geographical regions
I don’t know if it would convince a creationist, but that’s fairly fascinating in and of itself.
Always remember, creationists have their trump card. If you show them evidence that is undeniable and overwhelming, they can always say, “God did that to test your faith.”
Yeah, ring species are a great example and ought to be convincing, but from trying to bring them up in discussions with creationists, I found that I still ran into the argument “but they’re all birds, right?* None of them evolved into a cow!”
*the example I used related to gulls
This is the fundamental asymmetry between the two sides in the debate. On one side you’ve got people trying to get creationists to look at more and more evidence; on the other side, you’ve got creationists who have learned a bunch of tactics to derail and halt that exploration.
Or to put it more succinctly…
Science: “Hey look at this! Look at that! What else is there to look at?”
Creationism: “Hey shut up!”
Upon which, you respond, a la Umberto Eco, “God wants everything to be known,” and walk calmly away.
That would be Sir Cyril Burt, one of the leading child psychologists of his generation. Burt’s work on the heritability of intelligence was built on his studies of twins separated at birth - such cases would appear to be an ideal basis for study as the genetic material would be the same.
After Burt’s death researchers concluded that he had, at least in part, faked his data to agree with his conclusions.
It’s been 50 years since Burt’s death, so a lot of science has happened since then.
“Intelligence” or whatever word people want to use to define the trait measured by things like the WAIS and other tests is one of the most heritable traits in psychometrics.This has been shown through many, many studies using twins, extended families, adoptions, and measured genetics.
Intelligence (as defined in psychology) shows individual differences and heritability. Some people are smarter than others. Smart people tend to have smart kids. Some people find those ideas upsetting.
Those findings do not excuses scientific dishonesty, and those findings do not support eugenics or racism. Heritability is about individual differences, not group differences. A trait can be both heritable and show group affects from systemic racism. Eugenics is a racist ideology in which the proponents claim support from (often deliberate) mischaracterizations of genetics.
Honestly, as much as I hold science to such a high esteem. I cannot square the actions of a lot of psychometricians as being anything but full throated racist. Any causal reading of people like Rushton or Lynn shows writings dripping with racist guesswork and assumptions which use scientific sounding words to advance widely speculative racial flimflam (Rushton literally sold insane ahistorical books/pamphlets by the thousands at neo-klan rallies).
Its really mind boggling what ethical breeches were condoned or defended under the guise of scientific inquiry. These actions contribute much of the current alt-right theory and fuel right-wing terrorism to this day.
Oh yeah, those people and their supporters were definitely complete racists, absolutely no question about that. I expect Rushton, Murray, et al’s legacy will be nothing except racism. The problem is people like Fisher and Galton who were huge racists, but also made real contributions to statistics and other areas.
For many years, I saw the non-racists in the field try to just ignore the racist past, and move on. Fortunately in the last decade or so I’ve seen a big change in that the non-racists now think that much of that old racism has to be confronted head on. Teach, recognize and condemn the racist behavior, don’t just pretend it didn’t happen and hope it goes away.
I think this is just a mirror of the rest of society’s recognition of the complexity and flaws of many historical heroes.
The article I read about it long ago mentioned that so many later books and articles based their conclusions (since it appeared so definitive) on that data, and then further items cited those items, etc. So the incorrect assertion became embedded as a matter of gospel that became hard to remove.
It is ironic that Burt’s conclusions, though based in part on fraudulent data, have turned out to to be substantially correct.
The problem with that statement is even considering Burt falsified data, his conclusions were still generally correct—intelligence is heritable. This has been studied and repeated countless times. It has been shown in twin studies, family studies, adoption studies, and studies using only measured genetics.
At this point in research, the question of intelligence being heritable to some degree is not interesting. Whether genetic differences account for 40% or 80% of the difference in intelligence between two different people is also not something most researchers really care about. Researchers are much more interested in the exact mechanisms, environmental and genetic, which result in people having different levels of intelligence.
The issue is that -as you correctly point out - intelligence is partially an inherited characteristic. But, the proportion is debatable and inconclusive. Plus, it’s also demonstrated that environment, especially early in life, plays a critical role too. Freakonomics points out that the most significant factor in a person’s success in life is the education level of their parents. So for children of the educated, not adopted out, they get a double-boost - they inherit a greater tendency for smarts, plus perhaps the early childhood exposure to stimulate the development of intelligence.
I’m reminded of my time when I dropped out of college for a while and worked at a blue-collar factory job. I visited one of my co-workers, and in the entire house they had the Saturday newspaper and a few Golden Books are reading material for their 3 children. I spent my childhood reading 2 different sets of encyclopedia and visiting the library weekly for more reading material. Books were a part of my presents from an early age and I recall my parents reading to me.