Darksyde interviews Sean Carroll
Category: Science
Posted on: June 23, 2006 10:28 AM, by PZ Myers
Cosmology is almost as interesting as developmental biology, and now you can read a short summary of the origins of the universe at Daily Kos.
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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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(Complete listing)Shelley was familiar with tyranny and intolerance. In 1811, while yet an undergraduate, he'd had the 'The Necessity of Atheism' published at Worthing in Sussex. It appeared for sale in the bookshop window of Munday and Slater's for just twenty minutes. The brevity of the sale was due, unfortunately, not to an exhaustion of the edition, but the appearance upon the scene of a clerical wowser yclept John Walker. The good Rev., strolling by the bookstore, saw the essay upon display, and exhibiting correct Christian indignation, upbraided the two miserable sinners. The pamphlets were removed and burned in true Hitlerian fashion - except for one that Slater kept, and which is the surviving copy.
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Comments
I thought you didn't find other scientific research interesting, PZ.
Posted by: Jason![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 23, 2006 12:10 PM
I wonder why godbags gave up on debunking physics and cosmology. Is it because they're protestants and the catholic church already made an ass of itself with galileo. I think they finally released him from house arrest a little while ago?
Copernicus' theory had similaar problems to Darwin: it posed a huge, HUGE universe. Otherwise, why wouldn't stars look closer and farther away depending on where the Earth was on its orbit. Similarly, how can shifts in the prevalence of advantageous characteristics result in going from a fish to a horse? That would require ungodly numbers of generations, way way more than in numbers. Also the whole we're-not-the-center-of-the-universe thing too.
I don't see where there's room for god in that.
Posted by: saltyC![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 23, 2006 1:03 PM
Except, of course, that the whole "earth at the center of the universe" stuff was borrowed from the oh-so-wise-and-learned pagan Greeks, not anywhere from the Bible. It took a Christian - Galileo - to start turning the scientists (or the equivalent thereof in those days) away from "the inherited wisdom of the Greeks" or whatever to actual scientific observations of the universe.
Posted by: Jason![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 23, 2006 1:56 PM
The Trinity and other odds bits and pieces of Neoplatonist philosophy that largely make up Christian theology were also borrowed from the oh-so-wise-and-learned pagan Greeks.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 23, 2006 2:16 PM
Jason-
I find your statement here a little amusing. You give a subtle backhand to the Greeks while embracing a man who while nominatively Christian was clearly considered a heretic.
It's not as if his Christian thought was prevailing as you are seeming to be inferring but rather the evidence that he found and knew to be true DESPITE his religious inclinations.
In other words he was a scientist and a free thinker who happened to belong to a church. Why you think this gives a belief system credit one way or the other is beyond me. The man did it, and in this case, despite his belief not because of them.
Darwin was also a Christian at the time of his discovery, other scientists have been jews, muslims and hindus among a myriad more. It's the evidence and the men that matter.
Posted by: Chance![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 23, 2006 2:53 PM
The ancient Greeks were not influenced by the ancient Greeks.
Posted by: Joker Cross![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 23, 2006 3:27 PM
Nope.
They were influenced by Egyptians.
Posted by: saltyC![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 23, 2006 4:57 PM
saltyC wrote:
"I wonder why godbags gave up on debunking physics and cosmology."
They didn't. Creationists attack physics (radiometric dating) and cosmology (the Big Bang) all the time.
The "godbags", in fact, try to debunk the whole definiton of science.
Posted by: Y.B![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 24, 2006 3:36 PM