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.
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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?
Pygmies and Dwarfs should be the new "I win the Intarweb" quote
I'm sorry, but w00t's post was so astoundingly daft that I nearly wet myself with laughter.
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.
Are swim bladders modified lungs, as you stated, or are lungs modified swim bladders?
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).
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.
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.
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.
Guys, w00t is joking.
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.
;)
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)
Actually, Gilgamesh, while "dwarves" is not incorrect, "dwarfs" is actually the preferred form.
See: http://www.m-w.com
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!??!?
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
w00t, stop that!
Not everyone has seen the original Pharyngula post
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.
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.
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 its God's creation, it's beautiful.
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.
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.
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.
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
...GR was the answer to unifying gravity and classical E&M...
Er, not unifying. Reconciling.
-Rob
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.
Re #5...
It would be so richly ironic if this creationist had a betta (most likely in a tiny bowl or plastic cup).
"...the cartoon..."
Oh man, the world this guy must be living in. Scary.
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.
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.
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))
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.
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.
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
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.)
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.
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.
Trying to attack evolution via the Big Bang is like trying to make Jell-O out of a block of granite. :D
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 :)
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
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?
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
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.
Press him much harder and he'll probably come back with a challenge for you to read Jack Chick's Big Daddy.
Don't be so ridiculous. It's called wrathful dispersion theory these days.
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...
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.
Clarification - I was referring to the original JASE3217 questions, not the obvious jokes. ;) (Hey, it's Monday...)
Gluons, hah! Everyone knows it is Jebons that hold everything together.
God dammit... you just made me spray coffee all over my moniter, and I'm not even kidding.
Shit... I'm still laughing.
i have an innate distrust of anyone who hasn't seen w00t before.
boobies!
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
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!
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.
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?
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?
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.
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 :)
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. Wheres the fruit by which we should know you?
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!
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?
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?
You'll find it here, aero.
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'.
Is this related?
Please don't close your eyes to what they have discovered. Whether or not its God's creation, it's beautiful. or interesting.
I think that's the whole point, really.
"I am made of mesons, just as you are made of yousons."
So, we're all Gungans here now? Fuck.
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.
He's got the whole wide meson in His Hands.
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.
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."
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.
"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.
Brugger's right next door. I could just yell and he'd hear me.
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.
"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.
"In relativity, there is the concept of "proper time""
Another take on this is that in quantum theories, time is an exclusive parameter that is treated differently than others. This is a problem, not for reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics, but when you want to combine them fully. OTOH, string theory offer an out of sorts, which keeps QM time, AFAIK.
"when there was just a singularity, there was no time because of a lack of something else to be relative to"
Singularities are problems for any theories; sometimes they can be taken care of or circumvented. You can look at bigbang as an analog to evolutionary theory, ie keep looking at what we observe after the start of it because it is enough for a consistent theory. Then you avoid to go all the way back, and you can use a logaritmic time scale to get as close as you wish.
Modern cosmologies embed bigbang in infinite universes/multiverses of different sorts. The QM time parameter continues through bigbang in these scenarios, AFAIK.
"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."
Yep. I've been sucked in myself.
-Rob
Oh, and the map analogy to a theory is as brilliant as the no reelection analogy to a religion.
I have to ask, what is the no reelection analogy?
PYGMIES + DWARFS = CRAZY DELICIOUS
Re. question 6... Why exactly would one ask a physicist about the 'true mathematical odds', as opposed to, say, a mathematician?
I've been sucked in the opposite way, once before.
well, some of creationism. the Discovery Institute and its patrons have a very deliberate and rational plan for selling their snake oil. they have the values of attornies in the sense that they'll argue any position, any point which advances their agenda.
AFAICT, these people either actually believe science and knowledge do harm to those who know things, or they feel such knowledge crowds out "more important knowledge" (what doth it profit for ... but lose [their] immortal soul), or they are elitists and believe the unclean mixed multitude can't properly deal with these issues, rather i think like the aristocrats in Huxley's Brave New World.
dorkfork
See comment #39439 by Kristine "Pretty incompetent God! I guess that's what happens when He doesn't have to run for re-election."
ekzept
Worse than attorneys, and they are even better at this than you suggest and [....psst.......... mostoftherestofusdontgetit].
This will be an abrupt change of mood, but I spoke directly to this yesterday, twice, on Carl Zimmer's Hipster DoDos and on Red State Rabble's Dodos Redux as the reader/poster, sc.
Regarding probabilities and an incompetent God, how can you have forgotten about the Babel Fish? That's always been my favorite argument for the existence--I mean non-existence--of God.
"Heh! Actually, I think an angel tried to stage a revolution once, but he was thrown in jail. That's what happens in dictatorships."
Can't remember the title, author, etc., but there's a great short short story about a fellow who meets an, ah, exiled rebel leader on a bus . . . Anybody know it?
Almost as good about as the one about the world where the first two people finally stand up and go, 'yes, we ate it!' - and the unexpected reaction tha ensues . . . Can't remember identifying details for that one either . . .
Ah, now I get it.
The DI has put themselves in charge of Taking Back the Apple.
I think I met a Christian physicist, once. I might be mistaken though.
Excellent! More creationists need putting in their place like this!
And where is their place? Clearly right at the back, from where they can raise their hands to politely ask questions, if they happen to have anything intelligent to say.
Recently while observing large groups of "mud skippers" cavorting on the riverbank in Melaka, Malysia my thoughts were as follows: " these absurd fish with their ridiculous lifestyle are perfectly understandable in the context of evolution but as proof of INTELIGENT design....?"
Do supporters of inteligent design also believe that the almighty "whatever" (insert the name of whichever divinity is in use by custom and/or by enforcement in your area)is smoking large quantities of dope (Rasts are disqualified from answering)? Perhaps a divine intervention is called for?
"Oh, and the map analogy to a theory is ... brilliant...."
Seconded! But there are limits. There's an Umberto Eco essay dealing with the problems of attempting to make an perfectly accurate 1:1 map. The map quickly gets in the way. And the folding problem is a real bitch. (At least I remember it to be Eco, it reads a lot like Borges. That's the trouble with being six miles away from my library.)
Cheers,
-Flex
"Jebons, bleh. I am made of mesons, just as you are made of yousons."
No, no, no, my good man -- atmons and brahmons.
"I think I met a Christian physicist, once. I might be mistaken though."
As I understand it, once you determine a physicist's position on religion, you can't know how he spins it. And vice versa. I think it's called the Inscrutability Theorem.
So, he's not come here and posted. I wonder if he's even read the response. My guess, no. These folk are pig ignorant (my new favorite term) and must stay that way to maintain their 'faith'.
Most humans don't need to do that.
About the physicists always proving the biologists wrong, i can think of two examples: Fred Hoyle, with his irrelevant calculation of the odds of a protien assembling at random; and Lord Kelvin, who showed that the sun just wasn't old enough for there to have been time for evolution to have happened. Of course, now we know that Kelvin was wrong, we know how nulcear reactions can keep the sun hot for billions of years...but the biologists knew his model incomplete anyway, what with evolution having happened and all...
I wonder how long until we are being called darwinianismists?
Darwinslamists? Darwino-facists? And say, Doc, this fellow is obviously a believer in some sort of Christianity? Aren't you being rude and intolerant by slapping down his nonesense so handily? Aren't you afraid of running off "regular Christians" who would otherwise be on your side? Isn't that how that whole shebang works?
On an even more detailed map... one to one, does represent some problems as pointed out by Lewis Carroll and J.L. Borges:
From Sylvie and Bruno Concluded by Lewis Carroll:
What a useful thing a pocket-map is! I remarked.
Thats another thing weve learned from your Nation, said Mein Herr, map-making. But weve carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?
About six inches to the mile.
Only six inches! exclaimed Mein Herr. We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!
Have you used it much? I enquired.
It has never been spread out, yet, said Mein Herr: the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well
http://www.hoboes.com/html/FireBlade/Carroll/Sylvie/Concluded/Chapter11…
And Borges' even better known take:
Of Exactitude in Science
...In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.
From Travels of Praiseworthy Men (1658) by J. A. Suarez Miranda
The piece was written by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. English translation quoted from J. L. Borges, A Universal History of Infamy, Penguin Books, London, 1975.
Xin chao, Minh den tu HL, minh mong muon duoc lam quen voi tat ca cac ban. Thanks you
"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."
As a religious person I see it differently than PZ. I consider a belief that something lies beyond the physical to be a powerful and useful theory (belief) that best explains a great deal of the philosophical and scientific evidence.
Clearly not everything can be explained in physical terms. If you assume that only the physical exists and thus unproveable concepts such as love, morality, etc are just illusions of the human mind then you are just begging the question.
lurker:
What a b...load of uneducated twaddle. You clearly lack erudition, and most especially on the matters of which you speak. This, then, begs the question: Just why are you talking about this at all? Is it to walk around naked in your ignorance motivated only by your hubris?
Really, this is more or less a serious question - why do people speak so assuredly of that in which they have no knowledge?
But, whether or not there is a meta-natural realm, love, morality, "etc." are simply NOT just (or only) "unprovable concepts" that are "illusions of the human mind."
They are real, observable physical and mental BEHAVIORS of social animal species (not just humans, IMHO) that are certainly susceptible to scientific investigation and, potentially at least, rational explication.
With all due respect, I NEVER get this "without the supernatural, morality has no basis" meme. It's not at all a self-evident and self-executing statement. If someone out there really thinks it has validity, then it needs to be subjected to critical analysis, validated and supported like any other claim, not just assumed as "the truth."
"Supernatural" is just a bunch of doggerel
Of course, it can be argued that love, morality, etc. are physical: They're labels for rather large (not to mention fuzzy) collections of different brain states.
John M. Price said: "why do people speak so assuredly of that in which they have no knowledge?"
I might ask you the same question. Why do you presume that everything can be boiled down to a physical concept? You certainly have no proof of that, it's a belief formed by the evidence you've collected. I've done the same, only I've concluded that everything can't be boiled down to a physical concept. Not because science tell me this, but because philosophy does.
Again, lurker, what "evidence" do you have that the behaviors and brainstates that you are associating with your claim of supernaturality are NOT purely physical in nature?
lurker:
It is the most conservative and parsimonious position. Therefore it is the best starting point. I see no real need to speculate, imagine, or otherwise make up stuff beyond it. (Not always true, after all I am an exseminarian.)
No, it is knowledge based on evidence. Faith, the stuff of belief, isn't involved. That you cannot conceive of other ways of thinking, I'd direct you to the Latin:
Cogito
Puto
Scio
Credo
Learn something. Maybe you won't be taken as the fool you have demonstrated yourself to be.
There's the rub. Philosophy is self crippled in that there is no real need for its concepts to be validated. Self referential, internal consistency is all that is required. It is no defense of your ludicrous position. Really. You have, here, only deleted any substance you really thought you had in your vapid post.
"It is the most conservative and parsimonious position. Therefore it is the best starting point."
I started there too. I have since moved on because the evidence required me to.
"No, it is knowledge based on evidence"
OK, I can live with that. My knowledge is obviously different than yours.
"Philosophy is self crippled in that there is no real need for its concepts to be validated. Self referential, internal consistency is all that is required. It is no defense of your ludicrous position."
Your statement is pure philosophy as is your argument that you supposedly have the correct interpretation of the evidence while I do not. Your arguments are no defense of your ludicrous position.
"Again, lurker, what "evidence" do you have that the behaviors and brainstates that you are associating with your claim of supernaturality are NOT purely physical in nature?"
The feeling of pain, which is a mental state, can be caused by being struck with a hammer. The physical action causes the mental state, but it doesn't mean that they are the same thing. Being struck by a hammer causes pain, but being struck by a hammer is not pain itself.
Mental states such as the pain from the hammer do not have the same properties that other physical objects have. For example, pain hurts but it can't be described in terms of physics and chemistry. You can't say pain has dimension or that pain is made up of certain molecules, or certain electronic impulses, etc. You can't say my thoughts occupy a certain spacial location in my brain and then proceed to cut out my thoughts with a knife and analyze my thoughts under a microscope.
A scientist can know a lot about my physical brain, but he will never know what is in my mind unless I tell him. How do you think we know so much about the brain today? It's because the patient told the researcher "that squiggle on the chart means it hurt". Without that insider information the researcher would know nothing about my mind and about my thoughts.
If the mind could be boiled down to physical terms then you could describe it in the language of physics and chemistry without the need for anything else. From what I've seen, we can't do that.
Quoth Lurker:
"Mental states such as the pain from the hammer do not have the same properties that other physical objects have. For example, pain hurts but it can't be described in terms of physics and chemistry. You can't say pain has dimension or that pain is made up of certain molecules, or certain electronic impulses, etc. You can't say my thoughts occupy a certain spacial location in my brain and then proceed to cut out my thoughts with a knife and analyze my thoughts under a microscope."
Actually, pain is made up of certain molecules. Hot peppers, for example, chemically stimulate heat sensors in your mouth and elsewhere (don't rub your eyes...). Electric -- though not electronic -- impulses then carry the signal to your brain, where your thoughts do occupy certain special locations (see: EEG). Cutting them out might be a bit too painful and permanently damaging, and no, looking the excised bit of brain probably wouldn't be very educational at that point because it's part of a large system. However, if you want to donate your brain to science when you die I'm sure someone would appreciate it.
"A scientist can know a lot about my physical brain, but he will never know what is in my mind unless I tell him. How do you think we know so much about the brain today? It's because the patient told the researcher "that squiggle on the chart means it hurt". Without that insider information the researcher would know nothing about my mind and about my thoughts."
Actually, we're getting better at this and it's only a matter of time before it's perfected. Did you know that we can study the thoughts and intelligence of animals even if they don't tell us what they're thinking? Amazing, this "science."
But I just noticed that nobody's discussed this in several days. Oh well.