Rejecting evolution would be problematic for a paleontologist in a fundamental sense, but less so for a biologist, in that a biologist can conceivably concern himself with organisms in the here-and-now without necessarily having to concern themselves with their history
For example, a biologist can be the most dyed-in-the-wool creationist and spend their time doing things like studying the life cycle of some hitherto under-researched organism, or they can do things like figure out and document the mechanism that a plant’s chemical defense system uses against predators, etc… without even having to deal with evolution in a practical sense.
In a really pragmatic sense, most of the underpinnings of modern biology was done prior to Darwin’s publishing of “On the Origin of Species”, and a lot of that work was done by people who’d be considered creationists today.
Except the state of biology today cannot be comprehended without understanding (and accepting) evolution. In turn, if one shuts oneself off from evolution as a Thing that Exists, one simply cannot provided biology-based predictions or provide theoretical explanations of evolution-based phenomenons worth a lonely, frigid fuck*. Since science is ultimately about being able to make accurate predictions, that’s kind of an issue.
The same goes for denying climate change - which, BTW, the US right has gone from the “ill-informed, but still within the bounds of the sane” idea that while it happens it has nothing to do whatsoever with these here fossil fuels to the “utterly stark raving loon” notion that it’s all lies and conspiracies, ALL OF IT. Not just the predictions, not just the models but the basic data itself is a pack of lies and every single climatologist is in the pocket of Big Green. Public-speaking wise at least (who knows what they truly believe when the voters are out of hearing range) the observable reality that a) the earth is warming up and b) it’s causing a lot of problems, along with a few new opportunities is false. Yet anybody can see it happening on friggin’ Google maps at this point. It’s gone beyond disputing scientific minutiae into calling Science! itself into question because they happen to not like the predictions scientists are making, or are bought off by such.
It’s legitimately insane. Both in this practice, but also in the results and manifestations of this insane notion - like forbidding army intelligence to study a phenomenon that fucking *happens *or think up the possible geopolitical consequences of that phenomenon (which is the whole POINT of army intelligence in the first place - thinking ahead) ; or forbidding dikes to be built higher than an ideologically correct height… It’s all cuckoo.
And I mean, sure, you can explain very narrow cases of combustion with phlogiston theory ; and that will work good enough within the specific bounds of these cases. But then you start doing, yanno, actual science, that is to say extrapolate from these cases to others ; try and find wider laws or further practical applications of the phenomenon, which in turn relies on predicting the behaviour of Stuff - and it won’t work. Because there are no phlogistons. Your theory is wrong.
At which point you have two options : either come up with something other than phlogistons to explain the original cases ; or declare that fuck it, the theory is perfectly sound, it’s the world that ain’t behaving right. The latter ? Not science.
This is interesting to me, and I strongly doubt it’s true. Suppose someone is a young-earth creationist, believes that all life appeared on the planet in its present form some 7,362 years ago when YaHuWaHu created the earth and sky. That someone goes to school to get her degree as an epidemiologist.
Are you saying she’d be unable to conduct epidemiology? She wouldn’t be able to, say, track the Zika virus’s spread into new neighborhoods, or to determine its effect on fetuses?
If she’d instead become an oncologist, she wouldn’t be able to determine the effects of new medicines on brain tumors?
If she’d instead become an entomologist, she wouldn’t be able to devise a study to figure out whether a particular mite had a role in colony collapse disorder?
Well, it’s interesting that you bring up epidemiology because one of the biggest threats in the field today hinges on just that - evolution, natural selection. Namely, doctors prescribe antibiotics too often and often for diseases where non-antibiotic remedies would work just as well (or wouldn’t work either). And people stop their courses of antibiotics before they’ve eradicated the last of their infectious hosts, instead stopping when the acute symptoms are gone. Both of which increases the likelihood of some harmful bacteria becoming resistant to the antibiotics we’ve got, which in turn increases the likelihood of that trait being passed on, either within that particulary strain of bacterias or (worse) across strains.
And we don’t really have new antibiotic options coming up, not as such.
If you don’t believe in evolution, you can’t believe this scenario, will dismiss the expected outcome and deride or even fight attempts at solving the issue (since funding that means less funding for whatever you’re into)…and will fuck every last one of us up when the first such superbug wipes away half the globe like good ol’ Spanish Influenza.
If I could figure out a way to make it work, I’d do that tomorrow! My wife and I are both tired of the far-right-wing slant to EVERYTHING around this area.
I think the issue isn’t so much what they believe or don’t believe, but rather what they’ve started unilaterally declaring to be political issues, sometimes with conspiracy theories, in total defiance of scientific fact and good sense. Sometimes I think their opposition to such things is akin to that of a 2 year old; they’re against it because the Democrats are for it, and that’s the entire explanation.
That’s what baffles and terrifies me; it’s one thing to not believe the same thing, or to have a difference of opinion about its severity, but it’s another thing entirely to try and change the rules and/or declare it anathema just because it conflicts with your belief system, or because your political opponents espouse it.
I suppose what is “good” about the Republican party and conservative movement in general is that they serve as a check to the potential excesses of the Democrats and extreme liberal/left wing movement. I know everyone on this board likes to think of the Democrats and progressives as the “good guys”, but an extreme PC world where shiftless hippies tear down all the financial institutions, redistribute all the wealth and brutally enforce an equality of outcome is at least as evil as anything the Right would come up with.
Ideally you need something in the middle.
Republicans do seem to attract a lot of angry, ignorant jerks. “Conservative” by definition means to maintain the status quo. And many of them seem to react very strongly to anything that challenges them. In fact, it’s like many of them don’t even want to think. Which, IMHO, is why they tend to support authoritarian figures and institutions like the military and police, which serve as the instruments of authority.
IOW, anything that contract their ideology is “evil”, “un-American” or a “hoax” that must be mindlessly resisted by any means necessary.
Well it depends what you mean by “every” storm. Certainly there are always hurricanes and storms regardless and you can’t say “this storm is global warming, but that one isn’t”. But an increase in the frequency of hurricanes, nor’easters, superstorms, draughts, flooding and abnormal temperatures can be traced directly back to global climate change.
“You’re not helping” right back at you. I neither said nor implied that evolution is a “central dogma laid down by the prophet Darwin”, nor that evolutionary theory doesn’t derive from empirical observation (does the name H.M.S. Beagle ring any bells?). I said evolution is the “central organizing principle” of biology. An understanding of the fact of evolution (the descent with modification of all known living things from some primordial common ancestor), and of the mechanism of natural selection as the theory which best accounts for that evolution and the massive degree of adaptive complexity we find in the world of living organisms, are what make biology a science with true explanatory and predictive power, rather than a hodgepodge of random observations, however carefully they may be made.
This is sort of what I was saying. But, I want that epidemiologist to be familiar with evolutionary theory.
Now, let me clear. It is important to understand evolutionary processes; they are all around us. Language evolves, technology evolves, culture evolves.
And if you’re going to study biology, at this point in history, you should study the idea of macro-evolution through non-teleological mutation and natural selection, because that is the best explanation we have at this time.
Absolutely biologists need to learn the concept and understand it, even if they decide they lean toward intelligent design. But calling it “the” linchpin or foundation of all biology drives me up the wall, because logically* it’s not, *and it gives ammunition to smug creationist arguments like, “evolutionary science is some dogmatic religion that demands conformity and faith beyond reason.” (Which I grew up with as a fundagelical, and which I’ve seen my cousins pulled into.)
All that said, epidemiology is one place evolutionary theory (at least on the micro level) is a big deal and helps a lot. Even creationists will admit that, if they care about science (and believe it or not, many do).
Ugh, I think we actually are for the same thing for slightly different reasons. Very slightly. I was making a nitpicky point about word choice, but in effect I agree. Evolution must be taught, and it must be understood, which means it must be taught well.
The idea of the predictive power of Darwinian theory, in biology, seems pretty abstract, IMO. Genomic equilibrium is punctuated sporadically over long periods of time, and *macro-*evolution can be largely invisible for periods of time considerably longer than a millennium. I admit there are cases, such as in pigeons and dogs selectively bred for outrageous phenotypic variation, which point the other way.
–this is the second page, so my own opinion of what’s really crazy in movement conservatism is overdue.
The Americans for Tax Reform “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” is incredibly stupid. You want to be for low taxes, that’s one thing. Swearing to King Grover that you won’t offset one cut with another smaller increase, or claw back half of a cut that blew a hole in the budget, violates common sense.
As I recall, in the 1990’s, every GOP state legislator, every GOP congressperson, signed the pledge. That’s dropped off a little; I think it was down to 90% of the House GOP caucus in 2014.
Thank the Lord for small mercies.
So 90% of the GOP’s lawmakers–and it is lawmakers specifically–are foolish enough or reckless enough to make this pledge. How can we trust their judgment on anything else?
This seems to have started to be a “whole caucus” thing in 1991 or so. And I think the generation newly elected between then and now has had an overwhelming incidence of reckless foolishness in general. I think there is a link between the dominance of fanatical anti-tax pledges and general lack of common sense.
I think the problem is that the GOP has gone from being conservative in the sense of maintaining the status quo, to being reactionary, in the sense of wanting to move backward to some kind of mythical 1950s-esque American utopia. And I think that’s a big contributor to the current acrimony, in that rather than the Republicans acting as a sort of brake on the Democrats’ attempts to implement some of their more egregious policies, the Republicans are offering attempts to change things in the opposite direction.
For example, I may not think that some of the more radical environmental legislation proposed by the Democratic Party is necessarily a good idea, but nor do I think that we should dismantle the EPA like the Republicans want. Similarly, I don’t really want tax raises (I like to keep my money), but nor do I think that we should lower taxes if it means decreasing services to people in need. There’s no middle ground, and that’s a big part of the problem that wasn’t always there.