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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Today was the last day I lecture at my developmental biology students. We have one more lab and one final class hour which will be all about assessment, but this was my last chance to pontificate at them…so I told them about all the things I didn't teach them, and gave them a reading list for the…
OK, people, this is too cruel. I was gone all day yesterday, traveling to the Twin Cities for this Darwin Day event, and the site gets 37,000 visits. Are you all trying to tell me it's better when I'm not around to clutter it up? If I take off for a week will traffic climb to Daily Kos-like…
So, Janet posed the meme (or something with the same name) to enable us newbies to introduce ourselves. And because I'm a follower, not a leader, I have to offer up my predilections to you all.
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1. Because it's interesting, dammit!
2. Because science is the…
OK, so I finally read Coming to Life by Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. Unfortunately, I am having a hard time finding something original to say. To recap, Janet, Shellee, Bora (hey, check out Bora's link, books_coming_to_life_by_christ.php!), RPM, The Poreless One and PZ hit this book hard. The…
I thought you didn't find other scientific research interesting, PZ.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The ancient Greeks were not influenced by the ancient Greeks.
Nope.
They were influenced by Egyptians.
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.