…and this is a 
A creationist pest
Category: Creationism
Posted on: March 20, 2006 5:11 AM, by PZ Myers
A certain creationist has been spamming me lately with these same questions over and over. I'll answer them here, and I'll send the link to JASE3217 and see if we can't get him over here to "handle the truth."
From: JASE3217
To: pzmyers@pharyngula.org
Sent: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:23:10 -0500
Subject: About evolution?1. Is a theory a fact or a belief?
2. Where did the gases (big bang theory) come from?
3. After the water was formed, what was the first creature to come out of it?
4. Was it amphibious? Or did it run in and out of the water until it developed lungs?
5. If, yes why would it develop lungs under water?
6. What are the true mathematical odds (ask someone in your physics department) of something evolving? Of course you won't because you don't like the physics department, because they always prove biologist wrong.
7. If any of these questions are answered with a no, then using science they can not be facts at all!
This would make the cartoon completely hypocritical. You see if you just simply BELIEVE in evolution, then you have a religion! The religion maybe Darwinism, but if you answer I don't know to any of the questions above then you have a faith based concept of how we as a planet came about. Not a fact based!
I would challenge you to answer these questions, and give me a reply! I doubt you will, because most of you people are only interested in your truth and not actual truth. Try reading LEE STROBEL, "A Case for Christ."
I see you won't answer my questions, but I figured you wouldn't because most liberals can't handle the truth.
Ho hum. I've put my answers below the fold.
1. A theory is neither a fact nor a belief. A theory is a logical construct that explains a class of phenomena and has predictive power. We don't hold a theory because we believe in it, but because it works—and if a better theory comes along, we abandon the old version.
2. Ask a physicist. I'm a biologist, and so the Big Bang is something like 8 billion years out of my field.
3. The question about what was the first creature to come out of the water doesn't make a whole lot of sense—there were multiple invasions of the land. From your subsequent questions, I'm assuming you mean what familiar vertebrate animal first emerged; actually, though, arthropods beat us, and you can see in the book lungs of spiders and the organization of crustacean gills that they are clearly aquatic derivatives. If you're curious about the first tetrapods, though, here are some photos and diagrams. They were lobe-finned fishes.
4. They were "amphibious". The first terrestrial tetrapods already had lungs.
5. Lungs are very useful for fish! Have you ever heard of lungfish? The atmosphere is much richer in oxygen than is dissolved in the water, especially if that water is warm, brackish, and stagnant to some degree. Early lobe-finned fish would have gulped air to give them a richer amount of oxygen than they could extract from their aquatic environment. The air would have also assisted in buoyancy; modern teleosts have swim bladders, which is a kind of modified lung.
6. The true mathematical odds of something evolving are 100%. Life has evolved, and we have observed evolution in action. You might want to take a look at this short comment on creationist probability arguments.
7. Uh, none of your questions were yes/no questions. The only way I could think I could just answer "no" to any of them is if I were functionally illiterate.
I also have no idea what cartoon you are talking about. However, I don't "believe" in evolution; you are confused by your own mistaken faith in the power of belief to think that the only way someone could accept an idea is if they have some kind of religious devotion to it. I consider evolution to be a powerful and useful theory that best explains a great deal of evidence. It's the opposite of religion, which is nothing but a weak and useless notion embraced in the absence of, or in contradiction to, the evidence.
I've read Strobel, a long time ago. It was rather forgettable and unimpressive.
Isn't it a bit presumptuous to ask a question and then declare that I won't answer? I did answer them.
Evolution should not be a liberal vs. conservative issue, although it is true that many on the far right wing in America have adopted creationism as a cause. Many conservatives, however, have no problem with evolution.
Comments
I hate to break it to you, doc, but your answers to #3 and #5 are wrong.
If you doubt this is possible, how is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS?
Posted by: w00t | March 20, 2006 5:27 AM
Pygmies and Dwarfs should be the new "I win the Intarweb" quote
Posted by: LK | March 20, 2006 5:32 AM
I'm sorry, but w00t's post was so astoundingly daft that I nearly wet myself with laughter.
Posted by: Pinchbeck | March 20, 2006 5:42 AM
Could this dolt be referring to one of those cartoons showing "the ascent of man" leading from a fish crawling out of the water to a reptile to a mammal to an ape to a human? You know, the real pictorial cliff notes for dummies version?
Reference Cornell's David Dunning: One of the greatest problems with incompetent people is that they don't know they are incompetent.
Posted by: phototaxi | March 20, 2006 5:43 AM
Are swim bladders modified lungs, as you stated, or are lungs modified swim bladders?
Posted by: Ick of the East | March 20, 2006 6:06 AM
Swim bladders are most probably modified lungs (or protolungs, at least). Gas exchange with the air (to supplement the low oxygen in stagnant ponds maybe).
Posted by: Charlie B | March 20, 2006 6:45 AM
Lungs form as diverticula of the esophagus. Fish almost certainly gulped bubbles of air that they held in their gut as a source of supplementary oxygen initially. The physiological features that enabled gas production independent of atmospheric intake were almost certainly a later innovation.
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 20, 2006 6:45 AM
Be easy on w00t. He is obviously a naive 12 year old kid.
And it's dwarves, kid, not dwarfs.
Lets see, I have absolutely no training or knowledge in Biology but I'll take a crack at it.
Dwarfism is a genetic defect, pygmies evolved.
Posted by: Gilgamesh | March 20, 2006 6:48 AM
Koresh, I love the Internets!
Imagine how long it would take to get an answer from a real scientist before Al Gore came along pushed the buttons to get it started.
I remember reading about it at the time and thinking, cool; connecting private computers to send messages and share work.
I had no idea. Nor did any of us.
Posted by: Ick of the East | March 20, 2006 6:51 AM
Guys, w00t is joking.
Posted by: argle | March 20, 2006 6:59 AM
Wow. I can't believe you took the time to decode that gobbledygook and respond to it. The only thing he said that made ANY sense was the bit about physicists superiority to biologists.
;)
Posted by: dr. dave | March 20, 2006 6:59 AM
I strongly suspect w00t is being funny, that line is turning into a pretty good parody meme. All your PYGMIES + DWARFS are belong to us...
(btw, both spellings are acceptable - dwarves was coined by Tolkien for Middle Earth, Snow White's little hi-ho friends were dwarfs)
Posted by: Charlie B | March 20, 2006 7:01 AM
Actually, Gilgamesh, while "dwarves" is not incorrect, "dwarfs" is actually the preferred form.
See: http://www.m-w.com
Posted by: Grammar Nazi | March 20, 2006 7:01 AM
Perhaps our illiterate cretinist really meant, "your lies and not actual truth" rather than "your truth and not actual truth"...or "your half-truths and not actual truth". Because if he really meant what he said, then the favorite screed of every Bible-thumper, "without God there are no absolutes!" goes flying out the window. My truth, your truth, god's truth...who knows!??!?
Posted by: Daniel Morgan | March 20, 2006 7:08 AM
2. Ask a physicist. I'm a biologist, and so the Big Bang is something like 8 billion years out of my field.
Where did the gasses come from? Well, if you (not "you" PZ, but "you the doofus who keeps spamming PZ", or, perhaps more polietly, "you" as in "one") mean the Hydrogen and Helium, together with the trace elements in the Universe (Oxygen, Carbon, Iron, etc.), then:
About 10-20 minutes after the Big Bang (I forget the exact number), it was a soup of protons and neutrons and electrons. (And Dark Matter, but that doesn't participate in this little physical process.) They were interacting and reacting with each other. Eventually, the Universe cooled enough that when a couple of nucleons stuck together, they didn't get blasted apart again. This is the epoch of nucleosynthesis. It left us with (by mass) about 75% Hydrogen, about 25% Helium, and trace amounts of Deuterium, Lithium, and not a whole lot else.
And, the neat thing is, observations of the primordial Deuterium/Hydrogen abundance ratio and the primordial Helium/Hydrogen abundance ratio match very well with the predictions of the Big Bang! This is one of the three pillars on which the Big Bang theory rests, and is one of the reasons we believe that theory to be a good one.
All the other gasses were created via fusion inside stars and in supernovae.
Now, this begs the next question: where did all the nucleons that participated in nucleosynthesis come from? Well, before there was a soup of protons, neutrons, and electrons, there was a soup of quarks, gluons, and electrons; this was the "quark-gluon plasma," and its properties are not nearly as well understood as a more standard plasma. However, theorists as well as scientists at RHIC are working on it.
But where did all the quarks and such come from? The scientific answer to that question, at the moment, is "dunno." Now, of course, crationists and intelligent designers love to jump on a scientist whenever he says dunno and say, "AHA! Clear evidence for intelligent design (or creationism)!" But, er, no. It's just evidence that we don't know everything about the natural world yet, and that's why we still do science.
One of the interesting things about the Big Bang theory is that the theory as it exists today doesn't really address the actual moment of creation. If you just look at what GR gives you, you get a moment, but we know that's wrong-- because quantum mechanics would matter. The Big Bang theory only really starts some 10^-40 or so seconds after the moment of the "classical Big Bang" -- we can't really predict what's before that until we figure out quantum gravity. The earliest moment we can really say anything about right now is the "end of Inflation"-- and Inflation is more of a paradigm than a theory. Yeah, the latest WMAP results help support it, but we're shakier on that than we are on the rock-solid stuff that comes later (nucleosynthesis, cosmic microwave background, etc).
All of this has bugger all to do with biological evolution-- that theory doesn't tell us jack about the evolution of the galaxy, and the Big Bang theory doesn't tell us jack about the evolution of life.
-Rob
Posted by: Rob Knop | March 20, 2006 7:17 AM
w00t, stop that!
Not everyone has seen the original Pharyngula post
Posted by: Graculus | March 20, 2006 7:18 AM
On the benefits of swim bladders and proto-lungs, I give you ....cypinus carpio...the common carp. Very familiar to us here in the deep south and elsewhere. When you can live in what amounts to a swampy, sludgy, cesspool, being able to gulp a little air comes in real handy.
It would also be intersting to hear this wanker's explanation of the walking catfish. These guys use a whole different method of extracting atmospheric oxygen than that used by carp. Watching these critters first hand as a youth in south Florida pretty much cemented my position on evolution early on. Interesting that one doesn't necessarily have to go to the fossil record to see transitional forms. Just take a trip to the nearest swamp or drainage canal.
Posted by: paleotn | March 20, 2006 7:20 AM
Do you have insomnia PZ, or did you want to get up at 5 o'clock to argue with the the cretin JASE3217? Then again, maybe his ramblings make more sense when you are half asleep. I must try reading Behe when I am sleep deprived.
Posted by: Rockingham | March 20, 2006 7:22 AM
Dear JASE3217,
If you watch carp in a still pond you will often see them come up to the surface to gulp air. Here in Australia we have lungfish. We also have fish that climb trees and mammals that lay eggs. PZ and other biologists examine all the weird and wonderful living things that exist on this planet. They publish what they discover and there are many popular books accessible to almost anyone that explain what they have found. And what they have found is that all life is related and that species can change over time. Now maybe God created life this way, or maybe it came about via natural processes. No one can prove that God didn't make the world 5,000 years ago or yesterday for that matter. But what PZ is not doing is lying. He is telling the truth as he and a great many others have found it. Please don't close your eyes to what they have discovered. Whether or not it’s God's creation, it's beautiful.
Posted by: Ronald Brak | March 20, 2006 7:23 AM
For #2:
Gasses (mostly just Hydrogen) formed when the plasma of the very early universe cooled down. There was such a high energy density at the time tempuratures were too high for electrons to enter stable states around protons.
The question is probably "where did the plasma come from?" We're not really sure, but we have some good ideas. And these ideas involve more than "god did it." The question is probably quite similar to the equstion "where does sound come from?" Sound doesn't so much come from something else. Rather, it's an effect of vibration of matter. Energy and matter may be simply effects of vibrations of space and time.
Posted by: Ollie | March 20, 2006 7:27 AM
Energy and matter may be simply effects of vibrations of space and time.
How many dimensions are there this week?
That level of physics always made my head hurt.
Posted by: Graculus | March 20, 2006 7:37 AM
Thanks for the link Graculus. I knew w00t had to be kidding, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out the joke.
Posted by: CousinoMacul | March 20, 2006 7:41 AM
Energy and matter may be simply effects of vibrations of space and time.
How many dimensions are there this week?
That level of physics always made my head hurt.
Almost certainly the same number of dimensions as there were last week....
As to how many we know about: four. Three space plus one time.
There is a chance we'll see evidence for additional tiny dimensions at CERN in a few years. At the moment, though, the theories that tell us about them -- e.g. String Theory -- are completely untested. In fact, I'm not fully convinced (despite what they say) that string theory has even proposed any real tests of it's framework.
A theorist in my department has said that string theory is not good physics yet, but it is good math. It's an idea worth pursuing that may answer some of the fundamental unanswered questions in Physics. But we don't *know* it's the answer, any more than we knew that GR was the answer to unifying gravity and classical E&M before *it* had been subjected to any tests.
So really, the honest answer as to where the matter and energy came from is "dunno", but we do have some ideas that hopefully one day will turn into a theory we can test.
-Rob
Posted by: Rob Knop | March 20, 2006 7:46 AM
...GR was the answer to unifying gravity and classical E&M...
Er, not unifying. Reconciling.
-Rob
Posted by: Rob Knop | March 20, 2006 7:47 AM
the theories that tell us about them -- e.g. String Theory -- are completely untested. In fact, I'm not fully convinced (despite what they say) that string theory has even proposed any real tests of it's framework.
Yes, there are proposed tests, and those are going to be run first thing as soon as the LHC goes online. IIRC that is next year.
Posted by: Graculus | March 20, 2006 7:48 AM
Re #5...
It would be so richly ironic if this creationist had a betta (most likely in a tiny bowl or plastic cup).
Posted by: A | March 20, 2006 7:53 AM
"...the cartoon..."
Oh man, the world this guy must be living in. Scary.
Posted by: DJ | March 20, 2006 7:56 AM
Yes, there are proposed tests, and those are going to be run first thing as soon as the LHC goes online. IIRC that is next year.
Unless there's more than I haven't heard of, the tests sound very weak to me. It's going to require an extremely good understanding of your systematics in order to make sure you really saw something, and it's not clear to me that the things proposed are really String Theory specific.
The idea is that the graviton couples so much less strongly than the other force-carriers (making gravity the weakest of the four forces by far) because it moves in more than just the three spatial dimensions, but leaks off of our "brane". AS such, once we manage to make a graviton, we should see them just disappear as they leak off of our brane.
Here's the problem I have with this: the test involves missing energy. It involves *not* seeing something that was supposed to be there. Now, yes, that was extremely powerful in determining the existence of the neutrino, which was later verified. But we're going to have a big, messy-ass event where the energy doesn't add up. Even once you've managed to understand your systematics, and once you have enough statistics that you can show that there is too much missing to be explained by detector efficiencies, how does this really verify String Theory?
For years, cosmology theorists told us there was "missing mass." I'm not talking about Dark Matter, although the two were usually conflated. We know about Dark Matter from the dynamics of galaxies and galaxy clusters. However, cosmology theory required about 3-4 times as much mass as we saw, even counting Dark Matter; so there was "missing mass."
Well, eventually we found it, and it turned out not to be mass at all, but something weirder (Dark Energy). The neutrino came out straightforward: a new, massless (or nearly so) particle. The cosmological "missing mass" did not. Whenever anything is based on something being missing, it's just a preliminary, suggestive test, in my opinion.
I'm really underwhelmed by what is being touted as tests of string theory at the LHC. Perhaps I'm ignorant, and need to learn more about it. At the moment, though, it's just a very tiny brick that won't go terribly far in convincing experimentalists that String Theory is yet in the category of a truly tested theory.
Posted by: Rob Knop | March 20, 2006 8:07 AM
The idea is that the graviton couples so much less strongly than the other force-carriers (making gravity the weakest of the four forces by far) because it moves in more than just the three spatial dimensions, but leaks off of our "brane". AS such, once we manage to make a graviton, we should see them just disappear as they leak off of our brane.
I have this bizarre image of the experiment going wrong and a bunch of physicist zombies shuffling about moaning "branes, branes..."
Mondays suck.
Posted by: schemanista | March 20, 2006 8:26 AM
PZ, has your admirer got in touch yet?
And Ronald, your bit about the beauty of nature as revealed by science... I've come over all emotional about nature now!
((clever fishies and marsupials))
Posted by: Peter Barber | March 20, 2006 8:28 AM
pzmyers... would it be at all appropriate to turn the turn the tables slightly and ask JASE3217 to answer a few questions about religion and supernatural beings? Though I am sure it would be an exercise in futility as they go unanswered.
Posted by: Neet | March 20, 2006 8:33 AM
I wouldn't say string theory is physics. Right now it's more like math done by physicists who suspect these particular mathematical ideas will make good patterns to create a physics theory from.
Anyway, I love it when antievolutionists try to attack evolution via the big bang. It's like a prosecutor details the state's case of a murder committed last year, and the dense lawyer says "Oh yeah? Well can you explain what my client's granddad did on March 23rd, 1948? Well? WELL? How do you explain PYGMIES + DWARFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!111"
sorry, I couldn't resist.
Posted by: steve s | March 20, 2006 8:34 AM
Hey, everybody. I've been lurking in the background and had a couple questions...
I must admit, my level of understanding of Physics is very low, but I was curious about whether or not using units of time we're familiar with today, as in minutes and things, is actually meaningful? I was under the impression that time passage is really a relative thing that is dependent on the velocity between two masses.
Thanks,
Scott
Posted by: MtMan900 | March 20, 2006 8:40 AM
Scott: units are conventional, so you can pick any unit that is convenient. (References for more on units available, if you ask.) It is true that duration is a relational property, but that doesn't affect the unit choice; it just makes for different values of duration according to the appropriate relationships. (For example, in special relativity, according to the relative velocities of frames of reference.)
Posted by: Keith Douglas | March 20, 2006 8:50 AM
I'm really underwhelmed by what is being touted as tests of string theory at the LHC. Perhaps I'm ignorant, and need to learn more about it. At the moment, though, it's just a very tiny brick that won't go terribly far in convincing experimentalists that String Theory is yet in the category of a truly tested theory.
You need to start somewhere. if the tests confirm their predictions, then it's time to design more tests (VLHC?). If not, then it's back to the calculators.
Posted by: Graculus | March 20, 2006 8:52 AM
JASE apparently didn't get the memo.
It fills me with wonder and despair to imagine the sort of logical (said with a Dead Sea of salt) process that must have unfolded in his brain as he was writing this; the stupid, shit-eating grin that spread across his smug mug as he wrote down these 7 devastatingly poignant steps. "Surely this will cook his goose!" After all, PZ is only a doctor of biology, and JASE trumps that with all the accumulated knowledge of ten years Bible Camp and his high school youth group meetings. In fact, perhaps JASE's burning questions were a group project, he and his praying compatriots cackling in creationist glee one morning before social studies as they scribed this email in their fiercely dialectical manner.
Their cross necklaces must have quivered with joy.
Posted by: Heliologue | March 20, 2006 8:54 AM
Trying to attack evolution via the Big Bang is like trying to make Jell-O out of a block of granite. :D
Posted by: Laser Potato | March 20, 2006 9:10 AM
I have this bizarre image of the experiment going wrong and a bunch of physicist zombies shuffling about moaning "branes, branes..."
We don't need experiments to go wrong to do that :)
Posted by: Rob Knop | March 20, 2006 9:20 AM
I must admit, my level of understanding of Physics is very low, but I was curious about whether or not using units of time we're familiar with today, as in minutes and things, is actually meaningful? I was under the impression that time passage is really a relative thing that is dependent on the velocity between two masses.
Yep. And the neat thing is, all the laws of physics work exactly the same way regardless of who's doing them. Relativity is fun.
However, there are still meaningful definitions of elapsed time. In relativity, there is the concept of "proper time", which, loosely speaking, is the time that would elapse on the face of a clock. If a clock moves about, different observers will measure a different amount of time it takes the clock to get around; however, if they do their relativity right, they will all agree on the number of ticks that the clock has counted, and that is the "proper time".
The age of the Universe is the proper time of a particle which has been at rest with respect to the mean velocity of all of the mass and energy in the Unvierse. As such, it's a meaningful concept.
-Rob
Posted by: Rob Knop | March 20, 2006 9:23 AM
What do you get if you add pygmies and dwarfs? I mean, PYGMIES+DWARFS=?
"have this bizarre image of the experiment going wrong and a bunch of physicist zombies shuffling about moaning "branes, branes...""
Crap, now I have to wipe off my computer. Must remember not to drink while reading Pharyngula comments . . .
The dwarf/dwarves thing is a bit more complicated. Tolkien was basically arguing that as Middle English dwerg or dwerf evolved into Modern English dwarf, it should have brought along a plural form dwarves, as in loaf/loaves, leaf/leaves, shelf/shelves, elf/elves, etc. (but presumably was instead assimilated into the modern -s pattern due to disuse and unfamiliarity, as if people almost never talked about more than one shelf, and then started wondering, under the influence of grammatical correctness, what the plural might be . . .)
I wonder how JASE3217 feels about linguistic evolution?
Posted by: Dan S. | March 20, 2006 9:34 AM
simple:
PYGMIES + DWARFS= LOVE.
See the last few moments of "A Beautiful Mind." I can't see them anymore, as they caused me to rip my eyeballs out.
Posted by: mathpants | March 20, 2006 9:50 AM
Relatively speaking, Rob Knop is basically right. Relativity accounts for the fact that different observers can measure different elapsed times between events and other phenomena, but it defines a set of "preferred frames", which correspond to inertial (i.e. freely falling) observers. Someone traveling along one of these paths measures the "proper time" between two points, which can be shown mathematically to be either a maximum or a minimum. It's usually a maximum, leading to the slightly odd statement that the longest time between two points is a straight line (yes, that is correct), but for gravitational lensing, where light from a distant source bends around an intervening mass, you get both. The proper time is the one that cosmologists refer to when discussing the age of the universe.
BTW, just to avoid any confusion, relativity says that you can't really define a preferred velocity, since all inertial observers measure the same physics. You can always measure accelerations, though, as you can check by riding in the passenger seat of a car with your eyes closed, and confirming that you can pretty much figure out when the driver hits the gas, brakes, or turns the wheel. You can even do it by driving with your eyes closed, and noting the very sharp deceleration when you crash into something, but I don't recommend it.
Posted by: jfaberuiuc | March 20, 2006 9:51 AM
"Reference Cornell's David Dunning: One of the greatest problems with incompetent people is that they don't know they are incompetent."
Indeed. It's creationism in a nutshell.
It really should be 'How do you explain Mbuti and dwarves' . . .
"Of course you won't because you don't like the physics department, because they always prove biologist wrong."
I like how they "always prove biologist" wrong. Biologists, on the other hand . . .
"WE ARE PYGMIES+DWARFS WHO ARE INTERESTED IN IMPORATION OF GOODS INTO OUR COUNTRY WITH FUNDS WHICH ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN NIGERIA. IN ORDER TO COMMENCE THIS BUSINESS WE SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE TO ENABLE US TRANSFER INTO YOUR ACCOUNT THE SAID TRAPPED FUNDS."
-Dan S.
Posted by: Dan S. | March 20, 2006 9:52 AM
Since he "challenged" me, I did turn it about and send him an email, challenging him to come here to discuss it. With any luck, Mr JASE3217 willl show up in these comments and we can argue it back and forth.
If he doesn't show up, well, he got the email. We can speculate about how he can't handle the truth at will.
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 20, 2006 9:59 AM
Dwarfs and Elves came to Earth from the planets Duraf and Elva. I read this in a book my 3rd grade teacher gave me to read, so it must be true...
Posted by: Doozer | March 20, 2006 10:08 AM
As I understand it, the LHC tests are really tests for supersymmetry, which lies at the core of string (M-) theory and is hugely exciting in itself, but obviously isn't M-theory itself. The main problem with testing M-theory is simply that the scales are inhuman - everything is at or around the Planck length, and hence invisible to pretty much all forms of observation, while the particles predicted by the theory require vast amounts of energy to create and thus detect.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | March 20, 2006 10:11 AM
Dear JASE3217,
How does any supposed mathematical probability against the evolution of life point to a God? Pretty incompetent God! I guess that's what happens when He doesn't have to run for re-election. (I have never understood the creationist misstatement/misuse of the Second Law of Therodynamics, either--why would increased entropy in a closed system argue for an Interventionist?).
I have never met you. I cannot see you, but I have certain evidence that you exist. Therefore, I "believe" that you exist. Is my theory that you exist, based upon the evidence that I have, a "religion," then?
There are no short cuts, my friend. There is no hocus pocus to life, just a billion little steps toward becoming a new creature. I was once like you. I was once just like you. People in my family are like you, and I am the mutant. It is not religion, but it can be seen as spiritual, my transformation.
The real mystery is the material world, not the supernatural one. Take one step, then take another. Read about evolution. Learn. Try it. (After all, I spent years in $&%*#! Bible study.) Are you afraid?
Posted by: Kristine | March 20, 2006 10:13 AM
I wonder how JASE3217 feels about linguistic evolution?
My bet would be he hasn't heard of it. If it were explained to him, I assume he'd counter with the Tower of Babel story.
Posted by: george cauldron | March 20, 2006 10:24 AM
I like how he's used Lee Strobel and "you can't handle the truth" in the same letter. That's like: "YOU SHOULD READ FAMILY CIRCUS, BUT WON'T BECAUSE YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!" Strobel is a clod. He runs around, finds apologists who parrot apologetics that predate my great-grandfather (who died 10 years ago at 102), and then he parrots the parroting apologists in his banal books.
I also like how he's asked us to run off to the physics department. Usually I tell people to come find me in the math wing for such sage advice (I'm the clod-to-end-them-all when it comes to probability and statistics, being an algebraist, and even I can thwart the bad creationist math with no appreciable effort). Although I'm not even going to try to attest to the probability of intelligent life forming on any particular planet, that causes me no nevermind even if that probability turns out to be extremely small -- the universe has offered a literally astronomical number of trials. As for the true mathematical odds of *something* evolving... a physicist would say 1:1. There isn't a thing in the world that is in stasis.
I would, rather, invite Mr. Jase to visit a physics department himself. I doubt very much that he'll be able to find anyone past their first year of an undergraduate degree who would agree with him.
Posted by: Dustin | March 20, 2006 10:57 AM
Press him much harder and he'll probably come back with a challenge for you to read Jack Chick's Big Daddy.
Posted by: george cauldron | March 20, 2006 11:07 AM
Don't be so ridiculous. It's called wrathful dispersion theory these days.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | March 20, 2006 11:10 AM
Dwarfs and Elves came to Earth from the planets Duraf and Elva. I read this in a book my 3rd grade teacher gave me to read, so it must be true...
Shh, careful, the Scientologists might hear you...
Every time I read one of these little spouts of, uh, "reasoning", I wonder what must actually be happening in the brains of the people who write them. Seriously, do the reasoning centers just not work, or did no one ever teach them to evaluate evidence...
Then again, I know people who are analytical who believe their horoscope, too, so...
Posted by: Mike B. | March 20, 2006 11:15 AM
Pfft. Everyone knows gluons are a made-up dream, and we know this because we've never seen one. I want you to open your heart and realize the truth:
Jesus is the force-carrying particle of the strong force. And if you doubt this is possible, how is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS??
Heh, I love this line from the tract:
I can't even begin to describe everything that's wrong about that.
Posted by: Dustin | March 20, 2006 11:18 AM
Clarification - I was referring to the original JASE3217 questions, not the obvious jokes. ;) (Hey, it's Monday...)
Posted by: Mike B. | March 20, 2006 11:23 AM
Gluons, hah! Everyone knows it is Jebons that hold everything together.
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 20, 2006 11:25 AM
God dammit... you just made me spray coffee all over my moniter, and I'm not even kidding.
Shit... I'm still laughing.
Posted by: Dustin | March 20, 2006 11:26 AM
i have an innate distrust of anyone who hasn't seen w00t before.
boobies!
Posted by: garth | March 20, 2006 11:41 AM
Gingr Yellow,
Yes. That is what they are calling it. I have provided a link for those interested in Wrathful Dispersion Theory:
http://q-pheevr.livejournal.com/33337.html
LM Wanderer
Posted by: LM Wanderer | March 20, 2006 11:43 AM
Guys
JASE3217 isn't going to understand a word of this. God knows what his sense of humor is like, but he won't get yours.
Sad, sad, sad, sad -- but funny.
P.S. I think you guys are all darwinianismists!
Posted by: SkookumPlanet | March 20, 2006 11:46 AM
Thanks to everyone who explained the time relativity quandry I had.
The only reason that that was a question for me is because I recall reading a while ago about how, when there was just a singularity, there was no time because of a lack of something else to be relative to. Then, once the big bang happened, time started at that point and what have you.
In any event, way off the topic, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.
Posted by: MtMan900 | March 20, 2006 11:53 AM
When are Right-Thinking Christians gonna take on the "theory" of positively charged protons? You can't see protons, you can't taste their "charge", and nowhere does either testament mention them. Yet the scientism fanatics keep talking about them as though they were real.
It fills my heart with sorrow watching People of Virtue waste energy on skirmishes about evolution, when there are much more fundamental battles to be fought. We never should have given Maxwell's equations a free pass. Did you know he spoke to demons?
Posted by: sglover | March 20, 2006 11:54 AM
Is a theory a fact or a belief?
JASE3217--if you're reading this: You ever use maps? They aren't the place itself-- they're a type of model, just as a scientific theory is a model.
If you were making a map of a place that you'd just discovered, what would you draw? A land mass, a coastline, some hills? Suppose someone came after you, went in a little deeper, looked around and told you: Hey! it's got a desert! and a mountain range! Assuming you were intellectually honest and wanted an accurate map, you'd fix your map to reflect this new information. Another guy pokes around and tells you that there's a forest over there, a town over here and your original coastline is off a bit and doesn't include some islands. You'd make the appropriate adjustments. And after a century or so of these reports, all augmented by the best technology of the time, we'd have quite an accurate map--which would be impossible if the place weren't there to start with.
Now, suppose someone with no particular knowledge of this sort of exploration pops in, has a hissy fit and insists that the land doesn't exist--not because he has any proof, expertise or facts, but because he and his friends are so much more pious than the rest of us.
Question: Why shouldn't this person be laughed out of the room?
Posted by: Molly, NYC | March 20, 2006 12:01 PM
Well, you'd be wrong. It just so happens that I'm a reductionistic materialist and methodological naturalist with neo-Darwinist sympathies.
Any more, I sit around waiting for the DI to invent a new appendage to their growing list of emotionally charged jargon. It's actually getting to be kind of a challenge to use the entire list in a coherent sentence, but that makes it all the more fun. It's like finding a prize at the bottom of the cereal box.
Posted by: Dustin | March 20, 2006 12:02 PM
Hehe, Yeah I know about the Dwarfs/Dwarves thing. Just being a LOTR geek :p
Thanks too for the link to the article about pygmies and dwarfs.. pretty funny :)
Posted by: Gilgamesh | March 20, 2006 12:06 PM
JASE3217
"…. You see if you just simply BELIEVE in evolution, then you have a religion! The religion maybe Darwinism, but if you answer I don't know to any of the questions above then you have a faith based concept of how we as a planet came about. Not a fact based!"
I think from the tone of the above statement, JASE3217 is critical of religions and servility and we should pursue philosophies based on observations rather than blind faith. Well I wonder what wonderful observations JASE3217 can bring us from his world and would they stand up as fact after testing and scrutiny from disinterested parties? Come right out and say what you believe JASE3217 but then show us something concrete and testable that would support the notion that your religion can make any verifiable contribution at all to describing or explaining the world around us in any useful way. Where is your holy word on how to build a light bulb or make an antibiotic agent or to even use arithmetic? The billions of pages of science is far more fruit than the sum of all superstition and religious writing. Where’s the fruit by which we should know you?
Posted by: aero | March 20, 2006 12:14 PM
Jebons, bleh. I am made of mesons, just as you are made of yousons.
"JASE3217--if you're reading this: You ever use maps?" Now I'm the one spewing coffee with laughter. Good one!
To what religion do telephone books belong? JASE3217, ever use a telephone book? It's how you can pray to other people!
Posted by: Kristine | March 20, 2006 12:17 PM
Speaking of quacks, PZ, whatever became of the discussion with Fred Hutchinson you said you'd post. That was two weeks ago. Is it ongoing or something?
Posted by: steve s | March 20, 2006 12:29 PM
You know, the map is a really good analogy for a theory. Would you ask someone if a map was a fact or a belief?
Posted by: AoT | March 20, 2006 12:38 PM
Posted by: wildlifer | March 20, 2006 12:40 PM
Well, you'd be wrong. It just so happens that I'm a reductionistic materialist and methodological naturalist with neo-Darwinist sympathies.
You guys are forgetting Davison's classic, 'Darwimp'.
Posted by: george cauldron | March 20, 2006 12:50 PM
Is this related?
Posted by: Fred Gray | March 20, 2006 1:00 PM
Please don't close your eyes to what they have discovered. Whether or not it’s God's creation, it's beautiful. or interesting.
I think that's the whole point, really.
Posted by: cp | March 20, 2006 1:08 PM
"I am made of mesons, just as you are made of yousons."
So, we're all Gungans here now? Fuck.
Posted by: IAMB | March 20, 2006 1:12 PM
That map analogy is brilliant.
'I'm a Darwinner!'
Sorry, it just popped into my head.
I wonder how long until we are being called darwinianismists?
-Dan S.
Posted by: Dan S. | March 20, 2006 1:40 PM
He's got the whole wide meson in His Hands.
Posted by: Nash | March 20, 2006 2:10 PM
You know what's sad? The fact that so many here were able to mistake w00t's comments for an actual creationist's because that level of ignorance is not unusual among creationists.
Posted by: Chris | March 20, 2006 2:21 PM
Not surprising in the least, but sad nonetheless.
Poe's Law:
"Without the use of a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to make a parody of creationism that someone won't mistake for the real thing."
Posted by: IAMB | March 20, 2006 2:32 PM
Hilarious. Thanks for this. PZ, feel free to give Brugger a call in the Geology Department for rather wacky lecture on the big bang. Since, you know, it is 8 billion years out of your field and all.
Posted by: S.J. Redman | March 20, 2006 2:33 PM
"7. If any of these questions are answered with a no, then using science they can not be facts at all"
As the answer to q7 itself appears to be rather negative it follows that none of them (including q7) is a fact at all.
It's the kind of logic that would have appealed to my great-uncle Aneurin. He would also have shared JASE3217's views on liberals and the truth.
Uncle Neu hated conservatives but respectfully, as one might respect a resourceful enemy.
He didn't hate liberals though. He despised them, as being "neither one thing nor the other". I think he might have been referring to the political party of that name in the UK rather than to the present use of the label in the US, but one never knows. Uncle Neu liked controversy. He was a young earth atheist by profession, something I found out quite by chance one day when we were discussing the geology of the South Wales coal field, on which he was a mine of knowledge.
Posted by: Gav | March 20, 2006 2:35 PM
Brugger's right next door. I could just yell and he'd hear me.
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 20, 2006 2:48 PM
You know what's sad? The fact that so many here were able to mistake w00t's comments for an actual creationist's because that level of ignorance is not unusual among creationists.
That's because, as the link above showed, it was an actual argument by a creationist. They are beyond parody.
Posted by: dorkafork | March 20, 2006 3:30 PM
"Pretty incompetent God! I guess that's what happens when He doesn't have to run for re-election."
Heh! Actually, I think an angel tried to stage a revolution once, but he was thrown in jail. That's what happens in dictatorships.
"i have an innate distrust of anyone who hasn't seen w00t before.
boobies!"
That's funny, I have an innate distrust of anyone who hasn't seen boobies before.
Oh, and the map analogy to a theory is as brilliant as the no reelection analogy to a religion.